Falling into Place Read Online Free PDF

Margaret opened the gate and started toward the house.
    â€œWe’d better be quiet,” Roy whispered. “She might be taking a nap.”
    â€œWho, Gran?” The thought horrified her. “Gran doesn’t take naps.”
    â€œShe did the day before you got here. She fell asleep in her chair, sitting up. . . .” His voice trailed off.
    â€œThat’s ridiculous,” Margaret snapped. “Only babies take naps.”
    She grabbed the knocker and rapped it against the door like a fireman come to alert the house to the fact that flames were shooting out of an upstairs window. “Gran!” she cried, throwing open the front door. “We’re back!”
    And there was Gran, coming in through the doors from the back patio with a smile on her face and a trowel in her hand, awake.

Chapter 3
    â€œThere you are!” said Gran. She sounded surprised and pleased, as if they had all been playing hide-and-seek and she had been scouring the house for them, checking under beds and behind doors. Until at last she’d found them crouched behind a pile of clothing in the closet, giggling.
    â€œRoy said you were taking a nap, but I knew you weren’t,” said Margaret. She ran across the room and threw her arms around Gran’s waist.
    â€œMargaret, you’ll cut me in two!” Gran protested, laughing.
    Margaret let go and stood back. “You were gardening,” she said with satisfaction. Gran looked happy. She had a smudge of dirt on one cheek, the knees of her jeans were stained green, and her big toe was poking its way through a hole in her sneaker. It was the way Gran had looked at Blackberry Lane. She always seemed to be either going out to the garden behind the house, or coming in from it. That garden was huge. Sometimes Margaret helped her weed. Other times, they sat together and ate ripe tomatoes right off the vine with the juice running down their arms to their elbows.
    Margaret fell into a large, soft chair next to the fireplace. “Are you going to grow strawberries and squash, like you used to?” she said happily.
    â€œWith the space I have?” Gran put the trowel on the table and started to peel off her gardening gloves. “I’m afraid not. I’ll be lucky if I can coax a few tomatoes into life in pots. I only get about two hours of sun on the terrace.”
    â€œWhy don’t you make a compost pile?” said Roy, lying comfortably on his stomach on the rug. “That would help.”
    â€œIt’s not allowed.”
    â€œSays who?” said Margaret.
    â€œMr. Roland Whiting,” said Gran crisply.
    â€œWho’s he?”
    â€œPresident of the Carol Woods Steering Committee.” Gran sat down on the couch and tucked a piece of hair back into the bun at the nape of her neck. Her face, which was usually so tan, was pale. “No compost piles . . . no clotheslines . . . no color . . .” Her face grew still. “No signs of humanity of any kind.”
    There was a heavy silence in the room. Watching Gran, Margaret was suddenly reminded of a conversation she’d overheard between Dad and Wendy in the living room one night. The little girls were asleep and she was supposed to be reading in bed, but she’d tiptoed down the hall to crouch in her usual hiding spot behind the banister in the upstairs hall.
    â€œMom got another letter from Mr. Whiting,” her dad said.
    â€œWhat is he objecting to this time?”
    Her dad sighed. “Remember the flowered curtains that used to be in Margaret’s room at Blackberry Lane? Mom hung them in her new guest room as a surprise.”
    â€œOh, Matt.” Wendy sounded sympathetic. “What’s wrong with that?”
    â€œNothing, you would think, but Carol Woods has an exterior appearance rule, and Mom broke it.”
    â€œAnd what is an exterior appearance rule?”
    â€œThe residents are allowed to hang only