Nothing but Ghosts Read Online Free PDF Page B

angry to worried in an instant. “What was that?”
    “It’s just that—I don’t know. This morning I was early, right? And I thought I’d just get working. But when I got to the excavation site, Old Olson was alone. He was at the edge of the hole we’re digging, sifting for something with his hands, but that wasn’t the thing that made me wonder. It was what happened afterward.”
    “Which was?”
    “He turned and saw me, and he wasn’t happy. He asked me to come back in an hour. Basically insisted on it.”
    “Didn’t want your help?”
    “Wanted me gone is more like it. Probably it’s nothing, but still, I couldn’t shake this feeling.”
    “What feeling?”
    “Like he was hiding something.”
    “I see. And how does Ms. McDermott figure?”
    “Research.”
    “Okay.”
    “Just a little investigating.”
    “What do you imagine that you’ll learn from the past?”
    “Something more about Miss Martine and her secret.”
    “Why are you so sure that she has a secret?”
    “Well, I mean, isn’t it obvious? Beautiful rich woman disappears and never so much as shows her face all these decades later?”
    “You think you can find the truth in a library?”
    “I think that I can try.”
    “You think it’s any of your business?”
    I nod.
    “Why?”
    “Everybody’s story is a lesson,” I say, quoting from Mr. Weisler at school. Mr. Weisler is a total pain-in-the-butt kind of American lit teacher, but still you remember what he says.
    “It’s summer,” Dad says. “Give yourself a break.”
    I dig deeper into my mashed potatoes, take a bite of the green beans with their fancy almond slivers. I sigh and don’t talk for a while. “Dad,” I say finally, “this is one luscious dinner.”
    “Imagine it warm,” he says.

Chapter Nine
    I t’s a noisy business, cleaning the kitchen after my father has been cooking, especially on a mashed-potato night. It takes me longer than it sometimes does, and I can hardly stand my grimy self, the weight of my work boots, the stink of my T-shirt, the hot itch of the scalp beneath the hair beneath Danny’s cap, which I never did take off. All I want is to stand in the shower and let the day fall away from me, and now I finish scrubbing the final pot and turn it upside downin the drying rack. When I turn off the sink water, there is no sound. No mumbo jumbo of TV, nothing that my dad is laughing at.
    “Dad?” I say, and walk through the kitchen, down the hall, to where he sleeps, but it’s dark in here, and no one is lying on the couch, a pillow folded up against his stomach.
    “Dad?” I call, louder this time, and I realize that the whole downstairs is dark, that he isn’t even in the house, can be only one other place. I open a side door, and sure enough, the lights are blaring across the drive, the old stables lit up like the inside of a train at night. I see him and then I don’t see him as he walks around the room, the goggle-sized glasses on his face, a skinny something in his hand. Every now and then, he steps before the painting, which is propped up in the room’s center, looking like it’s floating. Gently, he brushes his tool against one small square of the canvas, then steps back, then leans in close, then trades his goggles for thepair of glasses on his head. Mom used to love to spy on Dad when he was thinking. “Just try to picture,” she would say, “the whirligig inside his brain.” I can’t do that. I can’t even try. He’s tried to explain his work to me, but it’s still a mystery.
    It’s pretty out here. The moon is less than it was last night, and there are thin shreddy clouds floating around in front of stars, leaving blanks in the constellations. The airwaves are busy with crickets and cicadas, and Sammy Mack, bless his monkey heart, is oddly, fabulously quiet. I keep standing here grubby, watching Dad across the drive, until finally I make my way toward him. “Hey” I say, as I open the door. “Disturbing the genius at