A Sudden Light: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

was graceful and her toes, exquisite. Her toenails were painted an azure blue that was mesmerizing. I tried not to stare, but I obviously failed, for she smiled at me and said, “I always walk about the house au naturel; it’s better for one’s posture.”
    “Sure,” I said, because I was almost fourteen and I had a boner, and that’s what almost-fourteen-year-olds with boners say.
    “It’s time to wash up for dinner. I see you’ve met your grandfather. Daddy, were you nice to Trevor?”
    “I gave him lemonade,” Grandpa Samuel said.
    “Did you? Well, isn’t that nice of you.”
    “He likes my shirt.”
    “Hmm. It’s a bit irreverent, don’t you think? God and cannibalism in the same thought?”
    “I’m not sure it would be cannibalism,” I said, hoping to impress Serena with my intellect. “You have to be the same species for it to be called cannibalism. So technically, it wouldn’t be considered cannibalism to eat a god. I mean, if there were a god nearby that you could eat.”
    “Aren’t you clever? Clever Trevor.”
    “Simply Serena,” I said without thinking.
    “It’s okay, you can make fun with me. Don’t be shy. Say it louder.”
    “Simply Serena,” I said louder, as she commanded.
    “Ha!” Grandpa Samuel shouted and slapped his thigh with a percussive smack. “Simply Serena!” he bellowed and tipped his head back and laughed and laughed.
    “How nice that you’ve bonded with your grandfather at my expense,” she said. “Now go wash up, boys,” she added after Grandpa Samuel had calmed down.
    Grandpa Samuel led the way. When it was my turn to pass through the front door, Serena held it closed a little so I had to stop.
    “I know you East Coast people have contempt for us out West,” she said with studied sweetness. “You think we’re not very bright.”
    “I don’t—”
    “Oh, you do ,” she said. “And that’s fine with me. Provincialism cuts both ways. But be aware that we uncultured westerners play a little rough sometimes. So, if you get hurt, well, I apologize in advance. I certainly didn’t mean it.”
    She looked at me in a way that scared me a little.
    “I’m sorry, Aunt Serena,” I said with genuine contrition. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”
    “You didn’t, Young Trevor.” She beamed at me, and she hugged me to her so I could smell her citrus scent again. “You didn’t offend me at all.”
    *  *  *
    Serena. Blue toes and citrus scent and catlike eyes.
    The table was piled high with an enormous amount of food, certainly more than four people could eat at one sitting. There was fresh-baked bread that filled the kitchen with a steamy, yeasty smell, and homemade fried chicken, wedges of watermelon, a chopped salad and potato salad, steamed corn on the cob, sugar snap peas, and a pitcher of lemonade with rosemary sprigs in it—one of Serena’s specialties.
    “Wow,” I said.
    “Just a little something I threw together.”
    Grandpa Samuel took his seat. Serena removed a medicine bottle from the cupboard.
    “Can you run upstairs and get your father?” she asked me as she took two pills from the container and placed them before Grandpa Samuel. “I told him dinner was ready, but he seems to be lagging.”
    “Take your medicine,” I heard her say as I left the room.
    I went upstairs, knocked briefly on my father’s door, and then let myself in. My father was sitting on the edge of his bed, curled forward with his face in his hands. He’d changed into clean khakis and he was wearing his boating shoes, because that’s all he ever wore unless he wore the one suit he owned, in which case he wore his plain black loafers. But I noticed he was wearing a crisply laundered man-tailored shirt. My mother must have packed that shirt, because my father was a slob and didn’t know what a creased sleeve was or why one should have one. He raised his head when I entered the room, and I recoiled comically. My father had shaved his beard. Just like that.