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

her elbow, holding a plate of yams.
    I reached out to touch his sleeve. I was glad he was back, but I knew better than to make a big fuss over him. He didn’t like it when people fussed.
    “Good evening, Miss Beck,” he said, putting his hand to his head like there was a hat to lift. “Oh,” he said, and then turned, smiling, to me. “How’s the knee, sweetheart?”
    “It stopped bleeding. It was the back.” I turned to show him.
    “Mm,” he grunted, looking. “That is a mighty big scrape.” He brushed his hand over my hair. He knew I loved that. “All settled in, Miss Beck?”
    “Yes, thank you. My suitcases arrived from the station very quickly.”
    “Does the room suit?”
    “Oh. Yes. It’s very nice. I like the—the wallpaper.” She blushed pink. She looked even prettier when she blushed.
    Bird came out of the kitchen, her face screwed up with trying not to drop the ice-teas she was carrying. Three of them. She always tried to carry three at once.
    Father made a special soft whistle—he said it was his Bird-call—and Bird looked up, smiling. “Daddy!” she cried. “You’re home!” All three of us—Father, Miss Beck, and I—jumped to save the tea. We each grabbed one, and Father laughed even though Bird had almost shattered glass all over the room. Bird scowled. “I was doing fine,” she said. “I wasn’t dropping them.”
    “Not yet you weren’t,” he said. Carefully, he set the glass he had rescued on the table and turned back to Miss Beck. “As soon as she can balance them on her head, we’re packing her off to the circus,” he said.
    Miss Beck looked confused again.
    “I’m joking,” he said. Then she knew to smile, but she still looked confused.
    The ice-tea sweated cold in my hand as I watched Miss Beck. I didn’t suppose a princess would lift a finger to save a glass of ice-tea, but I wasn’t ready to rule it out altogether. One thing I knew for sure, though. She’d never been in a house like ours before.
    Mae swung through the door, holding a bowl of string beans. Whenshe saw Miss Beck in her brown roses, she stopped and carefully moved her cigarette to the side of her mouth. “Dinner is served,” she said.

    The lamplight grew yellower as the dusk drew in, making them look hotter, even, than they were. Layla Beck, lustrous in her silk dress as dinner began, was now gleaming with perspiration and surreptitiously dabbing her napkin to her neck and temples under the guise of patting her mouth. Minerva and Mae exchanged smug glances, the girl’s discomfort adding some minor honey to the uniform sourness of their grapes.
    Jottie’s eyes flicked around the table automatically, checking plates. Miss Layla Beck did not care for her apples; that was clear. Jottie watched her pushing them around her plate and told herself that it made no never mind to her whether Miss Beck swallowed a single mouthful. It was just that Bird was watching her like a hawk, and now, Jottie knew, she’d have to hear about how fried apples were so revolting that no one could eat them, no one, when last week the child had downed half a pan. Jottie suppressed a sigh; next time she would tell Mrs. Cooper that she only took boarders who ate every last bite. And didn’t wear silk dresses. Or white suits, either. Jottie wiped the sweat from her palms with her napkin and switched from plates to manners. Willa’s arms were beneath the table—good—but she’d gone dreamy and silent—bad, because her head would sink lower and lower over her plate until she looked like an ape-girl. Mae, who never cared about food, was idly tucking her beans under her ham, while she listened to Miss Beck and Felix chatter about—what? Oh. The führer.
    “To me, the change in Berlin seemed quite striking,” Miss Beck was saying.
    “So you’d been before?” asked Felix, and Jottie busied herself by imagining the saga of Miss Beck’s sorry fall from riches to relief against the backdrop of her perennial—though