Daisy Lane Read Online Free PDF Page B

school cafeteria, and made a cup of cocoa. As she sipped the warm liquid, Grace felt deep gratitude toward Matt Delvecchio for the hot chocolate; it filled her not only with physical warmth but a gratifying feeling of well-being. Not for the first time she wished Matt was her father. She liked how he called her “Gracie.” She liked that he thought of her when she wasn’t around, and saved things for her.
    After lunch Grace tidied the bedrooms and then washed her and her grandfather’s clothing in an old washing machine that sat next to the sink in the kitchen. Grace filled the washtub halfway up with cold water and then added boiling water from the pan on the stove so that the Borax would have a shot at actually cleaning the mud off her grandfather’s clothes. The washing cycle made the machine chug and rock. The dirty rinse water emptied through a long black hose into the deep enameled kitchen sink, causing a cloud of steam to rise in the chilly air and fog the windows.
    Grace toured the second and third floors but there was nothing to do but a bit of sweeping; since no one used those empty rooms, they were never very dirty. Grace heard some baby birds chirping in a nest under the eaves at the back of a second floor bedroom. She hoped Grandpa, being a bit deaf, would not hear it and feel compelled to evict the feathered squatters.
    Due to his bad arthritis, Grandpa didn’t come upstairs, so it was one place Grace could go and feel a small sense of privacy. In warmer months it was a good place to read and do homework; with windows open on either side of the house a cool breeze off the river flowed through the rooms. That same “breeze” was currently rattling the wavy glass window panes and seeping in around their frames in a steady cold draft.
    ‘Some day,’ Grace thought, ‘I will live in a house that is warm in the winter and cool in the summer, with as much hot water as I like whenever I like.”
    As she swept she daydreamed about working for Matt Delvecchio and living in one of the apartments on Iris Avenue, where many Eldridge College students lived. She had imagined her apartment so many times that it seemed like a real place she actually visited. In this imaginary haven she had a brown and black-striped kitten named “Tiger” who curled up in her lap and purred as she sat in a deep, cushy reading chair. Beside her on an end table was a reading lamp, a plate of cookies and a big mug of hot cocoa. Nowhere in this dream did her grandfather appear. There was only blissful, peaceful silence. This was her idea of heaven.
    Her reverie was interrupted by the bang of the front door being flung open and her grandfather yelling, “Grace! Come down here this instant.”
    Grace’s heart pounded as she dropped her broom and hurried to the head of the stairs.
    “What in tarnation is this?” he bellowed.
    In his hands he held a small box tied with twine.
    “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never seen it before.”
    “It was hidden in the bushes next to the front porch,” he said. “Is this a gift from some boy? Is it from that paperboy you had over here?”
    “It’s not mine,” she said as she came down the stairs. “I don’t know where it came from.”
    “We’ll just see about that,” he said, glaring at her. “I know how these things start. Your mother and your aunt started the same way; sneaking around, meeting boys, hiding things.”
    He used his pen knife to cut the twine and tore off the brown paper wrap. Underneath was an expensive looking gift box, and inside was a glass swan. It was iridescent, and sparkled in the sunlight streaming through the kitchen windows.
    Grace’s grandpa made a funny noise in his throat, as if he were choking on something. His face became pale, and Grace was worried he was having one of his light-headed spells.
    “Are you alright?’ she asked. “Do you want to sit down?’
    “There’s nothing wrong with me,” he said. “Mind your own business.”
    “It’s