At the Edge of Summer Read Online Free PDF Page B

and weave thoughts, emotions, adventures for poor Papa. “Really, they’re like the pages of a diary,” she said, “spread all over the house.”
    His early still lifes, down the west hallway, morphed into his illustrations, framed and hanging in places of prominence in the front of the house. Those defiant, forbidding, arresting paintings in the Glasgow School style, all sharp lines and murky colors. Truth be told, those paintings terrified me as a child. Evil queens, stubborn princesses, unflinching knights. Bluebeard’s wife, holding a bloody key aloft. Little Red Cap caught beneath the jaws of the wolf. Sleeping Beauty, twined with roses, but with an ogre’s eyes glowing beneath the bed. I used to run down the front hall with hands to the sides of my eyes, like horse blinders. I didn’t want to catch a glimpse before bedtime.
    As though reading my mind, Clare said, “I used to think they were frightening. Perrault’s fairy tales, that is. And your father’s illustrations fit them so well.”
    “He painted other fairy tales too. Not as part of a commission, but just because he liked them. Snow White and Rose Red, battling the wily dwarf. Trusty John, turning to stone. Rapunzel, wandering alone in the wilderness.”
    “I like this one.” Clare touched a frame. A girl, red curls resting on a pumpkin, lay in front of a smoldering fireplace.
    “Cinderella. He mixed soot in his paint to get the texture exactly right.”
    “It’s not that.” She sighed. “She looks so lonely.”
    A nearly orphaned girl, sleeping in a borrowed place.
    “She wasn’t completely alone.” I reached past and pointed to the mice and crickets tucked into the corners of the painted kitchen, the starlings peering through the window, the lean dog nestled against Cinderella’s bare feet. “There are always friends if you look.”
    She turned and peeked up through her eyelashes. My face suddenly grew far too warm.
    “My favorite,” I said, clearing my throat, “is the queen from Rumpelstiltskin, sitting on her throne, her spinning wheel in the background. He borrowed a spinning wheel from Marthe’s mother and stood it in the corner of the studio for ages while he painted. I played with it until I accidentally ‘pricked my finger.’ It was only a splinter, but I didn’t know that. Maman found me lying in the rose garden, convinced I was doomed to sleep for a hundred years.”
    “And when you awoke, did you find true love?”
    It was a silly question, tossed off over her shoulder. There had been adolescent kisses in country lanes, infatuations with cabaret dancers, and an earnest crush on my uncle’s long-legged mistress, Véronique. But no love. I barely had time enough for tennis.
    She noticed I’d stopped. “As for me, I don’t think it exists. True love. It’s as make-believe as a magical spindle.”
    “I’m French. We’re supposed to believe that one can fall in love once a week.”
    “Then why haven’t you?”
    Something in her question was expectant. An expectancy that surprised me, given that this was only our second real conversation. Clare Ross, when she gave her trust and her friendship, gave it completely.
    But I evaded. “If you see how my
maman
used to dress me, you’ll understand why I’ve never inspired a great passion in any girl.”
    I took her to see the few portraits in the east hallway. She followed the string of Lucs down the hall—a fat-cheeked baby clinging to the back rail of a chair; a scowling boy in a hated lace-collared blouse and long curls; a boy, prouder and freshly shorn, posing with a tennis racket and a smile. She laughed at each one and I blushed.
    “They’re not very good,” I mumbled. “I didn’t really have hair as long as that.”
    “Pity,” she said, with a glint in her eye. “I think the curls are rather fetching.”
    I refused to answer.
    “It’s interesting, though, how even the portraits of you contain so much more than your face.”
    “My tennis racket, of