More Than You Know Read Online Free PDF

and cried out as it broke. Edith came running
    as I grabbed for the glass, thinking . . . what? That I could put it back
    together? I managed to cut myself across the web of my thumb, so
    there I was as she rushed in, bleeding into the sink with my heart
    hammering.
    “Now what is going on in here? First you’re talking to yourself
    and now you’re smashing things! Oh!” she said, and took the broken
    stem of the glass from my hand. “ Oh! Now look!” She was staring at
    it as if her whole heart had been wrapped up in that glass. It was a
    fragile one, an orphan we had found that matched no others in the
    cupboards, which Edith liked to use at dinner. The gash in my palm
    had begun to throb. I tried to stop the bleeding with a dish towel, but
    that made Edith madder.
    “Don’t do that! You’re always destroying things that have value
    for other people!” She took the dish towel from me and threw it into
    the hamper. Then she went for her Red Cross box. When she came
    back she wrapped my hand so tightly that it took some effort not to
    wince.
    I said, “Mother—there was something in here! I heard someone
    crying, and I spoke to it. Then it knocked that glass into the sink.”
    “What do you mean, something?”
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    B E T H
    G U T C H E O N
    “I mean—another person. Something. Not us.” Our eyes locked
    for a moment, but I couldn’t stand what I saw in hers, the dislike in
    the way she looked at me. I looked down; I guess that means I lost.
    She said, “ Honestly, Hannah!” She chewed her lip as she went
    back to strapping my hand. “I suppose you think if you do your
    chores badly, you won’t have to do them anymore.” Meanwhile, she
    wasn’t doing such a tidy job with the adhesive tape herself. She
    seemed to expect an answer from me, but I couldn’t give one. I was
    wondering if whatever had knocked the glass into the sink was en-
    joying this scene. How nice to know that now even creatures from
    beyond knew my stepmother was as much comfort to me as a bale
    of barbed wire.
    As soon as I could I went up to be with Stephen. He was reading
    a Little Lulu comic and had his new “specs” on. The glasses had steel
    rims, like Father’s. He looked very cute in them, like a tiny business-
    man. I sat on the end of his bed; his room had wallpaper with flowers
    on it, quite faded, but more welcoming than mine. It must have be-
    longed to one of the schoolteachers. He had two narrow beds with
    iron bedsteads and an old pine table between the beds, which had been
    painted green, inexpertly. Stephen was very upset when I told him
    about the broken glass and my cut hand.
    “You shouldn’t have spoken, you made it mad at you!”
    “I think it’s mad anyway,” I said. “Otherwise what’s it doing
    creeping around our house? Does it think it still lives here?”
    “Don’t talk to it,” he said. “Ignore it.” I said I’d try and went
    reluctantly into my cold front bedroom. Stephen had put ghost traps
    in the form of bookmarks on special pages in all the books on my
    bedside table; I checked them every night. That night I also began
    checking the closet. What if it hid in there and waited for me to turn
    out the light? What would I do if I opened my eyes in the dark and
    found the closet door opening?
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    M O R E
    T H A N
    Y O U
    K N O W
    *
    *
    *
    Some nights later, Edith was in her bedroom overlooking the
    sea. It had been a bone-chilling day of gray fog, and the night was
    thick and black. She had built up the fire in the cookstove in the
    kitchen so it would heat all night, and she had the radio going in her
    room. She used to listen to that late into the night and scribble, writing
    to my father, I guess. Stephen’s light was out, and I was in my room
    in front, in bed more because my room was cold than because I was
    sleepy. Edith didn’t let me use the stove in my room. She said I might
    do it wrong and burn the house down.
    Distinctly I heard the front door just below me open and