Drizzle Read Online Free PDF

plant.
    “Come on,” I tell Basford. “Beatrice will be making my favorite.”
    “Rhubarb something?”
    “No.” I grin. “Fried chicken!”
    I heave my own bag over my shoulder as Basford steps in front of me, walking down the row of plants toward the road. I glance backward to see what Harry’s doing. One of his stalks is sticking straight out, perpendicular to the ground, as if he’s watching me. But I don’t think he’s too mad. If he were, his leaves would be rustling, and they’re not. I wink. Harry bends his middle leaf into a smile.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 22
     
    The Turret
     
    Today is Friday, which is always, always, always my favorite day of the week. These are the days I get Aunt Edith all to myself. She doesn’t do one shred of rhubarb business. Instead, it’s all me. Sometimes we see a silly movie. Other times, she teaches me about micro-financing and introduces me to people who have dedicated their lives to helping others. Patricia and Freddy stopped going years ago. I suppose I could ask Basford to join us, but he’s watching Freddy’s soccer game, and besides, I’m selfish about Aunt Edith. I like when I have her all to myself.
    Finally, Aunt Edith’s Mercedes rolls very slowly down the circular driveway in front of our castle. Aunt Edith’s “driver”—or assistant, or secretary, or butler, whatever you want to call him—likes to make grand entrances. His name is Girard and he’s tall with a blocky nose and narrow shoulders that make him look like a long plank of wood, with arms and legs stuck out to the side. He’s really smart, supposedly, and works with Aunt Edith so that one day she’ll reward him with a high-powered job. That’s what she does with all her assistants. If I were her, I’d be looking for someone to hire Girard away right this second. He’s unbelievably annoying. He always talks about his time at Cambridge and Wharton, and says things like “Alas, sometimes I think I’d be better on a small pebble in the middle of the ocean, so drawn am I to both sides of the Atlantic.” Then he smiles, as if anyone understands what he’s saying.
    Girard rolls down his window and smiles broadly. He has yellow teeth.
    “Polly Peabody. My pleasure. As always.” He scurries out of the front seat and walks slowly to the back passenger door. “Your aunt.”
    He swings open the black door and Aunt Edith steps out, all glorious-looking. “Hello, Polly.”
    “Where are we going?” I blurt out. Aunt Edith looks at me disapprovingly. “I mean, it’s so good to see you. Sorry.”
    “It’s good to see you too, sweetheart,” she says. She walks over to me, pulling a tangled piece of hair out from my barrette. “Today I have a surprise for you.”
    Our last surprise was when Aunt Edith brought me to a science center so I could meet an astronaut who had walked on the moon. Just thinking about it makes me grin.
    “Today,” Aunt Edith tells me. “Today we’re staying here.”
    Here? I scan the fields, chewing on my bottom lip. “At the farm?”
    “The castle,” she says. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to show you.”
    She walks ahead of me to the side door of the castle, the one her father built so that we wouldn’t have to use the portcullis. (That’s the enormous wooden door in the front of most castles that needs to be lifted up high by chains.) Sometimes I forget that Aunt Edith grew up in this very castle too. I still think of her as a city person. Even when she came back home after Grandmom died, she never became a farm person again. She told me once that she thinks it was a mistake that Grandmom never left, that she didn’t explore the world more. But Grandmom always told me that books and poems were all she needed to explore, and that she was quite happy to be on Rupert’s Rhubarb Farm for her entire life, “tilling the earth and seeing what magic came forth.”
    Now Aunt Edith lives about ten minutes away, in a house she bought the very day she returned,