Peter and Veronica Read Online Free PDF

away, and now, after skating miles and miles down to West Farms, Veronica was going to give him a hard time.
    “Why not?” he demanded again.
    She shrugged her shoulders. “Wasn’t my idea in the first place. You talked me into it, and I just don’t want to go in. That’s all! Now let’s go.”
    The door of the diner opened, and Peter had to step to one side as a big man with a toothpick in his mouth came through the door. Before the door closed again, Peter caught a glimpse of the inside of the diner and got a warm, fragrant sniff of hamburgers and onions. Maybe Veronica had eaten lunch, but he hadn’t, and it reinforced his desire to act as peacemaker between Veronica and her kin.
    The man proceeded slowly down the stairs, and Peter said persuasively, “Let’s just take a look inside. We don’t have to stay.”
    “No!”
    “What have you got to lose? Your uncle will probably be so happy to see you that he’ll ...” Peter licked his lips in anticipation of the way in which Veronica’s uncle would show his joy at the sudden appearance of his niece.
    “No!”
    “Why not?”
    “Because I haven’t seen him for four years, and the last time he came he fought with my mother, so why should I go out of my way to see him?”
    Veronica’s parents were divorced. Her mother had remarried, and her father lived in Las Vegas with his second wife. Veronica hadn’t seen her father since she was little. She and her sister, Mary Rose, were children of her mother’s first marriage, while Stanley was her half brother. The uncle, whose diner they were standing in front of, was her father’s older brother.
    “Well, let’s just go in, and see what he has to say.”
    “No!”
    “You shouldn’t be so hardhearted, Veronica. Let bygones be bygones,” Peter said righteously. “I bet he’s sorry. After all, we all make mistakes, and if he’s sorry, you shouldn’t go on like that, carrying grudges. Give him a break.”
    Veronica snorted, but she looked hesitantly at the door,
    “Come on, we’ll try him out,” Peter said, taking her hand and pulling her up the stairs. “Let’s see what he has to say for himself.”
    “If he says one thing about my mother ...” Veronica said fiercely, but she allowed Peter to haul her up the stairs with him, through the door and into the diner.
    They stood for a moment inside the door, expanding in the warmth and looking around them. There were some booths against the wall and a long counter with a row of seats that ran down the length of the room. Peter, holding Veronica’s hand, skated her over to two unoccupied seats at the counter. There was a tall, blond, teen-aged boy behind the counter, and Veronica nudged Peter, and whispered, “That’s Charles, Jr.”
    “Who’s Charles, Jr.?” Peter asked, enjoying the view of three or four pies with triangular pieces cut out of them.
    “The youngest one. My uncle has two boys—August and Charles, Jr.”
    “Oh.” Peter inspected the case that held a large chocolate cake, an equally large coconut layer cake, and a variety of doughnuts. After a while, Charles, Jr., came over to them and said, “Yes?”
    Peter finished his appraisal of the baked apples, smiled at Charles, Jr., turned a little toward Veronica, and waited.
    But Charles, Jr., just looked at the two of them blankly and said, “What do you want?”
    “Let’s  go,” said Veronica, beginning to rise.
    “Just a minute,” Peter said, holding her down and catching a fleeting glimpse of some apple turnovers off in the distance. “Is Mr. Ganz around?”
    “My father? Yes, he’s in the back,”
    “Could we see him, please?” Peter said, trying to sound important.
    Charles, Jr., poked his head around the partition that separated the kitchen from the front and said, “Pa, there’s a kid here who wants to see you.”
    “What did you do that for?” Veronica hissed.
    Peter let his eyes move from the tray of
    Jell-O to the one filled with rice pudding and murmured