Gone But Knot Forgotten Read Online Free PDF

Communicating With Spirits: Contacting the Dead and Aura Reading for Dummies. Poor Harriet. She must have been aching to be with her deceased family. Just how far did she take this obsession?
    The papers and envelopes lying in the desk were carelessly mixed up, not the way I’d expect Harriet’s desk to look. When we did our homework together, I used to tease her about the precise way she organized her notebook by subject and date. She never turned in an assignment with sloppy handwriting. She wrote round, neat cursive and dotted her I’s with hearts. Someone else had disturbed Harriet’s desk.
    I sorted through the mess, looking for an address book, and finally found a small one bound in blue leather with only a few names. No person on this list missed her for ten months?
    The left side of the foyer led to a formal dining room. Two heavy branched silver candelabras, now tarnished, stood in the center of a long table covered in dust. A massive china cabinet with a curved glass front displayed dozens of pieces of fine porcelain. I winced at the thought of having to inventory each and every item.
    A vintage design hid a state-of-the-art kitchen with white AGA appliances, black granite countertops, white cabinets, and a black and white checkerboard floor. A person could easily prepare meals for a hundred people in this space. When we were teens, Harriet and I baked package brownies in my bubbie’s small kitchen. Heaviness gripped my chest as I guessed Harriet seldom used more than one of the eight burners on her fancy range.
    Beyond the laundry room sat a maid’s room and bath. About twenty cardboard cartons full of God knows what sat in the middle of the area. I’d have to open and catalog the contents of each one.
    Something niggled at me.
    Obviously Harriet didn’t employ live-in staff, but she still needed someone to take care of this big house. Did the cleaner carry a key? Why hadn’t she discovered Harriet’s body?
    I moved into a family room on the other side of the kitchen, filled with comfortable furniture and a large-screen television. Next to a VCR stood a neat stack of old video cassettes: Pinocchio, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Pippi Longstocking, and The Muppets. Apparently Jonah’s movies.
    I steeled myself to go upstairs. Who knew what sort of unpleasant surprised awaited me? The finial on top of the newel post wobbled a little in my hand as I began to slowly sniff my way up the stairs. On the second floor, I peered down the wide hallway in both directions. Through an open door on the far end, directly above the living room and library, I spotted the large master suite, the place where Harriet’s body lay for ten months. I’d go there last.
    In the opposite direction, rooms sat on either side of the hallway. Another door at the end turned out to be a long, narrow linen closet. The shelves inside held piles of neatly ironed white sheets and stacks of towels in pastel colors. Blankets and pillows filled the bottom cupboards.
    A cheery yellow guest suite greeted me behind the first door. Abernathy said Harriet had become a recluse. When did she last entertain visitors?
    I stopped in my tracks as I passed through the door across the hall. Children’s books, stuffed animals, Legos, and toy trucks filled the light blue room. A car-shaped bed, painted with a red racing stripe, sat in the corner under Lindberg’s famous painting of an angel guarding two children crossing a bridge.
    Harriett had preserved Jonah’s bedroom for more than fifteen years, but this shrine to the boy’s memory appeared disarrayed. One drawer gaped slightly open, and the small mattress sat somewhat askew.
    I steeled myself to enter Harriet’s bedroom. A portrait of Jonah sitting in Harriet’s lap hung in a gilt frame on the taupe walls. Opposite the doorway a queen-sized bed with a headboard upholstered in rose velvet dominated the space. Black polka dots covered