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

watermelon and only watermelon.
    “But I love watermelon!” Grandpa cried.
    I found it difficult to keep from guffawing. Grandpa was like a comic book character. His hands were big and his head was big and his hair was everywhere, and when he said “love,” he threw up his arms—and I couldn’t help but stare at his missing fingers.
    “Do you see?” Serena said to my father and me. “This is what I have to deal with every day. Sometimes he’s here, sometimes he isn’t. He has to write things down to remember them, and even then—”
    “I love watermelon!” Grandpa cried, continuing his protest.
    Serena made a face at us, showing her exasperation.
    “Take some chicken,” she said.
    “I don’t like chicken,” he whined. “It has tendons.”
    “All animals have tendons, Daddy,” Serena said. “Tendons and ligaments. Sinews and gut. Fibers and connective tissues. Bones are connective tissue, did you know that, Trevor? I bet you’ve already learned that in biology class. We think of bones as steel rods in our bodies, but, in fact, they are pliable, entirely flexible organs that serve important functions beyond structural integrity, like producing both red and white blood cells.”
    We fell silent. All of us seemed stunned by Serena’s impromptu lecture on bones. And maybe that was her point. Maybe that was how she dealt with Grandpa Samuel’s outbursts about tendons.
    “Just as bones must be flexible,” she went on, “so we must be flexible in our relationships in order to achieve harmony. We must acknowledge that relationships are dynamic things—always changing—and sometimes they come to an end. You can speak to that, can’t you, Brother Jones, with your recent separation from Rachel?”
    “It’s not actually a separation,” he said.
    “No? What is it, then? She’s in England and you’re here. That seems awfully separate to me.”
    “I mean, legally we’re not separated,” my father said, glancing at me.
    “Laws are made to regulate the economy, Brother Jones,” Serena said, “not affairs of the heart. Legally or not, you are separate from your wife, am I not correct?”
    “But they’re getting back together,” I blurted out, causing Serena to look over at me.
    “It’s just a break,” I confirmed. “It’s not forever.”
    “As I said, relationships are dynamic things,” she said with a shrug, suggesting I had proven her point for her. “Please take some chicken, Daddy. You need your protein.”
    “I don’t like chicken—”
    “You have to eat something.”
    “Is this house haunted?” I asked, trying to steer the topic away from tendons.
    Serena continued eating for a moment before she replied, “Are you afraid of ghosts?”
    “No.”
    She took more potato salad and then pointed to the platter of fried chicken.
    “Chicken,” she said to Grandpa Samuel.
    “Tendons,” he replied, pouting.
    “Why do you ask of ghosts, my nephew?”
    “Because I heard something. I think I heard a voice.”
    “A house like this talks to you,” Serena said. “It has a lot of things to tell you.”
    “Like what?”
    “Riddell House is nearly a hundred years old,” Serena said with a shrug. She picked up her fork and took a bite. “Think of all the people who’ve walked across this floor. The floor knows them all; I don’t. Your grandfather hears dancing at night upstairs in the ballroom. But he suffers from dementia, so no one pays attention to him.”
    “So Riddell House is haunted?”
    “It depends on how you define the term ‘haunted.’ ”
    “Serena, please stop,” my father said.
    “Ben is nervous,” Grandpa Samuel muttered. He stood up and went to the telephone table, took a pen, and wrote something on a Post-it note. He wrote very deliberately and with much concentration.
    “What’s he doing?” I whispered to Serena. “Who’s Ben?”
    “He can’t remember anything, so he writes things down on Post-it notes. It’s all gibberish; none of it makes sense.