Time of the Witch by Mary Downing Hahn Read Free Book Online

much thought to how she might look, but most grandmothers I knew had gray hair, with maybe a blue rinse on it. Just as Wanda said, this grandmother had bright red hair, done up in a solid mass of tight curls all over her head, and she was wearing purple eye shadow and black mascara and frosty pink lipstick. But she was smiling over Jason's head at me and her pale blue eyes were soft and kind.
    "I sure am. And you must be Laura, Grace Randall's niece." Wanda's grandmother smiled, revealing a gap as wide as Wanda's between her front teeth.
    I nodded. "And that's Jason."
    "Well, pleased to meet you both. Wanda told me all about you, but I clear forgot when those dogs started making such a fuss." She smiled again. "You can call me Annabelle, just like Wanda does. I don't like being called grandmother. Makes me feel old before my time and my time's coming soon enough, honey." She patted her curls and winked at me. "It ain't real no more, but it sure beats gray, don't you think?"
    I smiled. "It looks pretty," I said, wondering how on earth I could call someone old enough to be my grandmother by her first name.
    "Wanda's out in back somewheres working in the garden. Why don't you go find her while I take Jason inside and clean him up some?" Annabelle started up the drive, carrying Jason. "You don't need to worry about the dogs. They won't bother you now they know you."
    Keeping an eye on the truck I'd seen the dogs run under, I followed the drive around to the back of the
house. Just as Annabelle had said, Wanda was squatting in the garden, her back to me, pulling up weeds. When she saw me, she wiped her hands on the seat of her shorts and grinned. "Why didn't you get here sooner? I'm just about done now. I could've used some help."
    "Don't you go running off somewhere, Wanda," Annabelle called from a window. "I want you to take Tanya Marie outside for a while."
    Wanda rolled her eyes up at the sky and sighed. "Sometimes I think I see more of that baby than Charlene does. If she was a baby duck, she'd think I was her mother for sure." Wanda pulled up a few more weeds and tossed them on the heap beside her. "Well, at least that's done for this week. You want to go in the house and get something to drink?"
    I followed Wanda up the sagging back steps and into the kitchen, glad to be out of the sun. Not that the kitchen was any cooler. If anything, it was hotter, but at least it was shady.
    "Be sure that screen door is shut!" Annabelle called from somewhere in the house.
    "It's shut," Wanda answered, though why it mattered I didn't know. The screen was so full of holes it looked as if someone had used it for target practice, and swarms of flies were crawling all over the dirty plates on the kitchen table.
    Trying not to notice the bowls crusty with dried cereal, the dirty cups and glasses, and the frying pan filled with half an inch of congealed grease, I watched Wanda open a cabinet and pull out two plastic tumblers. "You want Bugs Bunny or the Roadrunner?" She held up the glasses so I could see the pictures.
    "I don't care."
    "I'll have the Roadrunner then. It's my favorite." Opening the refrigerator, she got out a glass bottle and poured us each a grape Kool-Aid. "Charlene gets these glasses from the Dairy Queen. We got the whole set, but these are the only two clean right now."
    I nodded, not sure what to say.
    "Charlene says they're going to be collectors' items someday and we can have a yard sale and make a fortune on them. You think she's right?"
    I shrugged. "Who knows? My mom's always seeing things in antique stores that she gave to the Salvation Army years ago. She's still upset about giving her whole collection of dolls away when she was thirteen."
    "Guess you should just keep everything in case it's going to be valuable someday, only where would you put it all?"
    "Wanda?" Annabelle appeared in the doorway with Jason at her side. She was holding a little girl wearing nothing but a diaper and a big smile. "Guess who's ready to