Angel of the Battlefield Read Online Free PDF Page A

your apartment.”
    â€œThat
is
what we have in the kitchen!” Felix said.
    â€œShall we continue?” the woman said, looking directly at Maisie. “Since being
inside
the dumbwaiter is off-limits.”
    The Woman in Pink’s favorite phrase was “off-limits,” as in “this bedroom is
off-limits”
and “that hallway is
off-limits
.” Maisie especially liked peering into all those off-limit rooms, which looked exactly like the boring ones they could enter except that a red velvet rope hung across the doorway. A fancy way to say “keep out.”
    Maisie left the dumbwaiter, and she and Felix followed the Woman in Pink back up the stairs and through the Dining Room where a giant wooden table was set with Phinneas Pickworth’s china. The Woman in Pink explained that the china had its very own pattern designed just for Phinneas by some famous person—alternating peacocks and pineapples along the rim and a big pair of interlocking
P
s in the center—all of it laid out as if Phinneas himself was about to host a dinner party. Felix thought it was kind of creepy to leave the table set like that.
    Out they went into yet another room, this one circular.
    â€œThe Grand Ballroom was considered the heart of the house,” the Woman in Pink was saying. Her hands swept upward. “It was the first room in the United States to incorporate lattice design as a decorative scheme.”
    â€œAh,” Felix said, just to say something.
    Up the Grand Staircase they went, the Woman in Pink describing the statues, the tapestries, and the marble banisters. Every inch of the place had a story behind it. Felix tried to imagine Great-Aunt Maisie as a young girl. To him, she was the shriveled old lady they’d been forced to visit twice over the weekend in the nursing home, who ate cottage cheese and had a crooked mouth and talked all garbled. It was hard—almost impossible—for him to imagine her ever being his age.
    The Woman in Pink paused briefly at a black-and-white photograph that hung on the wall.
    â€œHere’s someone you know quite well,” she said.
    Felix stared right into the eyes of the little girl in the picture. “Great-Aunt Maisie?” he said softly.
    â€œThat’s correct,” she said and continued up the stairs.
    But Felix stayed put, studying the soft, pretty face of the little girl. She had braids and wore a white dress. Behind her, it looked like a party was taking place, with blurry people in fancy clothes on the great lawn that rolled down to the ocean. Felix pressed his finger against the glass as if he could actually touch the little girl. Could this really be the same person who lay all wrinkled and infirmed in that assisted living place? The thought made him sad for reasons he couldn’t explain.
    Felix leaned closer to the picture. At the edge of the photograph a little boy peeked out as if he’d run into the field of the camera’s eye at the very last moment.
    â€œWho’s the boy in the picture?” Felix asked.
    â€œThorne Pickworth,” the Woman in Pink said. “Maisie’s twin brother.”
    Both Thorne and Maisie had a twinkle in their eyes, like kids who had a secret.
    The Woman in Pink cleared her throat. “We’re going upstairs now, Felix,” she said. “We’re already running late here.”
    Reluctantly, Felix continued up the stairway, feeling as if those two kids in that photograph were watching him.
    â€œNow here’s something special that Elm Medona has,” the Woman in Pink said when Felix reached the hallway at the top of the Grand Staircase. “Something children like very much.”
    Maisie stared. She blinked her eyes. She blinked again.
    â€œThe—the vase,” she stammered.
    â€œWhat vase?” the Woman in Pink said.
    â€œThe priceless one,” Maisie said, pointing. “The
broken
, priceless one.”
    All three of them