Hush Hush Read Online Free PDF Page A

for both of us. That’s what you promised. She could not ask Alanna larger questions about their past. Do you really think she meant to hurt us that day, too? Why did she give us up and move so far away? No point in revisiting wistful arguments, either. Maybe we could have saved her that day. Saved her and saved Isadora. She couldn’t have left us in the car. We would have gotten out and run, gone for help.
    Ruby was four the last time she saw her mother.
    “I have to go away for a while,” her mother said. “To get better.”
    “Daddy said you are better.”
    “I am. But they want me to get treatment. Just in case.”
    “I thought you had a sickness that women get after having a baby.”
    “I did.”
    “Were you sick when you had me?”
    “No.”
    “What made you sick?”
    “They don’t know. It’s a sickness they don’t understand.”
    “Are you still sick?”
    “No, I don’t think so. But we have to make sure.”
    “Do you miss Isadora?”
    “Of course I do. Every day. Don’t you?”
    That had been a tough question. “She was just a baby and I was a big kid. I loved her—”
    “Of course you did.”
    “But I don’t miss her. Is that bad?”
    “No. Ruby, you haven’t done anything bad, okay? You and Alanna—you are very good girls.”
    “We weren’t always good. When you were sick. We made noise sometimes.”
    “It wouldn’t have mattered, sweetie. It wouldn’t have mattered.”
    Ruby did not understand then that her mother was never coming back. That became clear only later, and even then Ruby wasn’t sure why. Why couldn’t her mother come back? She said she was going to South Africa because she had lived there as a child, but it felt as if she had picked the farthest location possible. For years, Ruby kept thinking she would come back, just walk through the door one day, the way the song promised. Mommy always comes back . Of course, she was thinking of the door of the old house, back in Bolton Hill.
    In this house, you couldn’t hear anyone coming through the door unless you were in the living room or dining room. This house was large, almost too large, with strange acoustics. If it weren’t a new house, built to spec, Ruby might have thought it haunted. Right now,she could hear Joey crying—well, not exactly crying, but making the odd seagull noises he made when he was happy. That meant Felicia and Joey were nearby, probably in Joey’s room, the smallest of the four bedrooms on this level, but also the only one with its own bathroom. Felicia wasn’t awful. She was just—Felicia. Their father’s second wife.
    They still owned the old house. It sat empty. No one wanted to buy the house where the lady had gone crazy and murdered her kid, even if it hadn’t actually happened in the house. Ruby knew enough about real estate to understand that if her father lowered the price enough, someone would buy it. But he kept the listing artificially high. So while it was true that no one wanted to buy it, it was also true that her father, for some reason, wasn’t ready to sell it. He said he needed to find a special buyer, someone who appreciated what he had done to the interior. He said he might convert it to apartments. One day. It made Ruby sad that her childhood home sat empty. She couldn’t have said why. She just knew it was terribly sad. Maybe it was because an empty house could hold only one memory, the big memory, the thing that no one wanted to remember. Whereas if a new family moved in, perhaps the house could start over. Her father had started over, with Felicia. New wife, new house, new baby.
    How would Alanna and Ruby start over? When?
    She decided to risk putting her hand on her sister’s bed, as softly as possible, palm up. Seconds passed, but Alanna finally rested her palm, damp and sticky, on Ruby’s. It was uncomfortable sitting that way, with her wrist bent back. But Ruby sat there for a very long time, listening to her sister breathe in and out.

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