Family Reunion Read Online Free PDF Page A

purple-and-green-striped handbag. I wondered why he was not using his leg, but if I mentioned it, he'd remember the leg, and I could always hope that he was on the downside of leg-carrying.
    I gripped his arm, but Angus threw me off. Last year he was a scrawny, thin, weak eleven-year-old. This year he's still thin, but he can pin me to the wall or the floor or, I suppose, the lake bottom should he choose. I'm against it. Little brothers should stay little.
    “Nobody can have a son and not mention him!” I cried. “How about Christmas presents? Birthdays? And there's money! You have to pay for new shoes and braces and band instruments. And wouldn't Grandma and Grandpa have noticed and said something? And Mother—during the divorce, our divorce—wouldn't Mother have mentioned that? She mentioned everything else on earth. She would have thrown in a son named Toby. I think you're making it up, Angus, and I think it's mean and cruel and horrible, and I want the truth.”
    Angus hates to repeat himself. He always wants a conversation to be brand-new. “So ask Dad. He'll be home Friday night. I'll get Annette out of the way.”
    Angus was truly not interested. He was interested in the money in little Vermont pockets, and he was interested in cockroaches, but he was not interested in his own incredible remark. “But Shelley, Dad does have another son. His name is Toby”
    Angus ran upstairs, and I could tell he was rooting around in Daddy and Annette's room. He came down with a pair of binoculars.
    He was now burdened with the sort of collection that makes an older sister nervous, because who could guess what this latest project might be and where he was planning to put that beach chair? Experience told me not to go along. I tried to see into his eyes, but the sunglasses kept his secrets. I resent sunglasses when other people wear them. They could be laughing at you or ignoring you and you can't ever know. Black lids or silver reflections replace their eyes, as if they are part robot. When people wearing sunglasses speak to you, you want to wrench the things off their faces.
    But if you wear them, you live in another world, safe in your own dark.
    You should always be able to wear your sunglasses, but other people should never be allowed to wear theirs.
    In the kitchen, Angus looked around for a nice portable snack. I tried to think of a threat that would force him to talk, but Annette walked in. Angus stood in front of the cake so she wouldn't spot our ski trails in the snow icing. “I'm going to walk down to the village and go to the library,” she told us. We just nodded. She hesitated, hoping one of us would want to go with her, I suppose, or at least say something nice, but I was frozen by the specter of Toby, and Angus was too busy with his own plans.
    Annette left the house, pausing at the clump of orange tiger lilies at the edge of the yard. She loved them and had tried putting them in bouquets, but they didn't last.
    I thought she would never be out of sight and hearing range. I turned to interrogate Angus, but he was gone, having taken the other door, and was marching off by himself. He never cares what he looks like and never cares whether anybody goes with him. I like to have a friend along. In fact, if I don't have a friend along, I probably won't go.
    I cut myself a piece of cake. I drank my milk. I walked outside.
    The hedge was woven with honeysuckle and bees. Perfume and humming crossed in the soft air. Waves made by a passing motorboat lapped over smooth stones. I lay on my back in the high grass and planned my conversation with Daddy. So, Dad. How was work? Spoken to Toby lately?
    I wasn't lonely out there in the grass. How can you be lonely when the sun is beating down on you? But I was alone and afraid of what Angus had said. Fear isn't like sunglasses. Fear brings darkness, but a dark full of menace instead of safety.
    I tried to think of safe things. If only my friends from New York were here—Marley