The Truth According to Us by Annie Barrows Read Free Book Online

Jottie.
    “Stella said she saw Emmett eating a club sandwich at Petersen’s last Saturday,” said Mae. “I wonder why he didn’t come by.”
    Jottie glanced up from her apple stack. “He wasn’t with a girl or someone?”
    “No. Stella didn’t say. She
would
have said if he’d been with a girl.”
    Jottie scraped the slices into the skillet. “How about you string those beans, Mae?”
    “Where’s Minerva?” Mae asked, her lips streaming smoke.
    “I don’t know. How about you do it? And get the tea from the icebox, would you? Here, Bird, you stir this.”
    I slipped off my chair. I knew what was next. As I slid into the front room, I heard Jottie say, “Where did that child get to?”
    —
    Miss Layla Beck was standing in the front room, just standing. Now she was wearing a silk dress, of all things. It had brown roses on it. There are no such things as brown roses, but she looked like a princess. And maybe she is, I thought suddenly. Maybe she is a crowned head of Europe forced to flee for her life. It was possible. They were having a lot of trouble back in Europe; I had read about it. This was exactly the kind of thing that wouldn’t have occurred to me before the parade, and I congratulated myself on my keen observing. If you’re going to unearth hidden truths, keen observing is your shovel. I had to admit that it hadn’t helped me unearth much of anything yet, since, for all my efforts, I had been unable to discover any answers to the questions that had antagonized me so at the parade. Mr. McKubin was just a man who worked at American Everlasting, and Jottie said she didn’t know any ladies who wore Jungle Gardenia perfume. But now here was Miss Beck in her silk dress, radiating mystery. She was a mysterious stranger. What a stroke of luck! A mysterious stranger was liable to change everything, and that was a thrilling thought. Of course, I wasn’t silly; I knew it wasn’t likely that she was a princess. But she was exotic and beautiful and wonderful, and I could hardly wait to gain her trust and then find out every last thing about her.
    I smiled winningly. “Hello,” I said.
    She jumped. “Oh!” and then, “Hello. It’s—it’s Willa, isn’t it?” She spoke in an elegant way, each word clear and nice, like tapping on a glass.
    “Yes’m.”
    She smiled on-off. “Miss Romeyn told me dinner was at six?”
    If she wore silk dresses, she was probably used to butlers and silver trenchers. I glanced through the archway to our table. We had silver knives and forks with my grandmother’s initials on them, but our plates were chipped. “Well.” I was reluctant to expose our shoddy ways. “Jottie doesn’t really mean six when she says six. She means
close
to six.” Our dining room wasn’t very nice, now that I looked at it. “I can ring a bell to call you, if you want.” I thought that might make her feel at home.
    She didn’t seem to care about the bell. “Jottie?” she asked. She didn’t know who I was talking about.
    “Jottie—that’s Miss Romeyn.”
    “And she’s…?” It was a refined way to ask questions, with just your voice. “She’s your…?”
    “Jottie’s my aunt. So’re Minerva and Mae, too.”
    “Minerva and Mae?” She did it again!
    “Oh. Minerva—you met her; she’s Mrs. Odell. And Mae is Mrs. Saubergast. They live here. During the week, anyway.”
    “Oh.” She looked confused. “My.” Then she said, “And Mr. Romeyn?”
    “That’s my father.” She peered into my face then, finding the ways I looked like him. I stood up straight, proud that I looked like Father, and like Jottie, too. “He’s Jottie’s brother,” I added helpfully.
    Suddenly Father was there, stepping in from the hallway. “Someone talking about me?” he asked. He always did that way, appearing out of the blue. He moved fast, and by the time you heard him, he was already there. He was famous for it. My great-aunt Frances Tell had once fainted dead away when he popped up at