Violins of Autumn by Amy McAuley Read Free Book Online Page B

life with my toes?”
    “What a sight you’d be. Pierre could be your handsome and noble Tarzan.”
    “I don’t think so!” I say, laughing even harder as I imagine Pierre stripped to the waist and wearing only a small loincloth.
    We travel through a wooded area and I begin to suspect the dense walls of trees might squeeze shut on us like a vise. When the forest gives way to meadows, I breathe easier. In the open we have no cover, but nothing lurks out of my sight.
    Denise points past my shoulder. “Look over there.”
    The metal steeple of a church in the valley gleams with late-afternoon sunshine. Behind it, appearing to have burst straight out of the hillside, is a magnificent buttery-yellow stone castle. Storybook princesses don’t live in the dank, dark castles found in England. They live in castles like this one.
    Before leaving Madame LaRoche’s, we were instructed to travel as far as her brother’s farm, outside of the town of Chevreuse. We’re ten kilometers away, if that. A drop in a deep bucket compared to a full day of cycling.
    We come to some sparse woods and clatter onto a bridge. A river quietly burbles through the stone arches, carrying a familyof ducks. The babies swim behind their mother. The father duck charges ahead in the lead.
    “Aren’t they sweet?” Denise gets right off her bike to take a look.
    I get off my bike as well, but one glimpse into the expanse of deep water below sends me clutching for the railing. As a child, I nearly drowned in our pond out back. Even after all these years, the feeling of terror, the intense panic of being trapped underwater, unable to breathe, hasn’t left me. I’ve been terribly afraid of water ever since.
    “Let’s take a break,” I say, heading for dry land.
    We wheel our bikes to a short slope of grass at the river’s edge and park them between two evergreens. I don’t know how something as ordinary as sitting on grass could delight me, but it sure does. I’ve never been so happy to take a seat.
    I untie the map at my neck and smooth it flat on the soft grass.
    “Please excuse the extra features I’ve sweated onto the landscape,” I say with a laugh.
    Denise and I hover over the map, button compasses in hand, and plot a route we both agree on. Once again the map becomes my scarf.
    The ducks waddle out of the river, babies in tow. Father duck stands at attention in such a threatening way I wonder if he’s about to plod over to quack a warning in our faces.
Keep your distance from the ducklings! Quack!
    “Do you know what I miss?” Denise says. “Sundaes from the Woolworths counter.”
    Eyes closed, she tilts her head. From the dreamy smile on her face, I’d guess she’s thinking about a boy, not ice cream.
    All that’s left of her dark lipstick is a faded rim, as if sherubbed a cranberry around her lips. For the first time, I notice the copper-brown freckles that dot her cheeks. In spite of dirt, sweat, and sunburn, she’s quite pretty. I rake my fingers through my hair and wish for a damp washcloth.
    Denise’s eyes pop back open. “So, Adele. What do you miss?”
    What do I miss? I miss listening to Yankees games with my brother. I miss my friend Gayle, who I haven’t seen since I went to boarding school. I miss slobbering over Clark Gable at the movies and doing crossword puzzles with my aunt. I miss oranges and chewing gum and toothpaste.
    “I can’t think of a thing,” I say with a shrug.
    “You know what I don’t miss? The blackout. Summers were horrid. No air in the house at all. What did they expect us to do in a stuffy, muggy house with the windows shut and covered like that? Not breathe until the end of the war? I couldn’t even wake up half the time; it was so bloody dark in the morning I mistook it for night.”
    Exhausted from the miles of riding, I’m not really in the mood to chat, especially about the blackout. All I want to do is eat, savor a few minutes of peace, and give my aching legs a break.
    “And the