Secrets 01 Secrets in the Attic Read Online Free PDF

approach, and I slowed my pedaling.
"Hey," I said when I drew up to her.
She took a deep breath and turned. She didn't say anything.
"What are you doing? I mean, where are you going?" I asked.
"For a walk. Just for a walk."
"Oh. I came into town for an ice cream. You want an ice cream cone?" I asked, even though I was nearly certain that by the time we would get to George's now, the lights would be out.
She shook her head.
"So, how come you're just taking a walk?"
She didn't answer.
"Karen?"
"Leave me alone," she replied, and walked on.
I felt as if she had slapped my face. I remember the blood rushing into my cheeks.
"Sure, I'll leave you alone," I said indignantly. I watched her for a moment and then turned and pedaled back, now annoyed that I wouldn't get my ice cream cone.
I pedaled harder and faster in frustration and had worked up a good sweat by the time I arrived at my house. I put my bike away in the garage and tried to get up to my bedroom without my parents noticing. My mother was off for two days, and my father had just finished a case and was taking a breather. They sat in the living room watching television, although I knew my father would have a book opened as well and would read during the commercials. He hated wasting time.
"A minute lost is a minute gone forever," he told me repeatedly.
I conjured up some great lost-and-found department with the shelves weighed down by seconds, minutes, and hours. There was a meek little bald man with thick eyeglasses, clicking a stopwatch and waving his long, bony right forefinger in my face as he chanted, "Lost and forgotten, lost and
forgotten."
The steps of the stairway betrayed me with their gleeful creaks and squeaks.
"Zipporah?" my mother called. "Where were you? Why didn't you tell us you were going out? Where could you go this time of night, anyway?" She rattled off her questions as if she thought she might forget one.
I turned slowly and walked to the living room. My father looked up from his book. It was always a matter of great interest to me to see how my father considered me. Sometimes he looked genuinely confused and gave me the feeling he was wondering how someone like me could be born of his seed, and sometimes he looked delightfully amused and gave me the feeling he saw something of himself at my age, just as he often saw in Jesse. Right now, he looked vaguely. annoyed, because I had caused an
interruption in either his reading or his relaxation.
My mother just looked curious.
"Well?" she asked.
"I went to get an ice cream at George's, but the store was already closed," I said. It was half true, and half-truths were not officially lies. I was still at the age when lying to my parents flooded me with guilt. When you're very young, you're filled more with fear, because you actually believe parents can see lies. If they don't contradict you, it's because they're being generous and permitting you an escape.
"I could have told you it would be," my father said, and returned to his book.
"You should at least tell us when you leave the house, Zipporah."
"That's right," my father seconded.
"I'm sorry."
"You do all your homework?" my mother asked. "Yep."
"Try yes and not yep," my father said, not taking his eyes off the page.
"Yes," I said. What was wrong with yep? Jesse sometimes said yep.
"I'm sure you did all your homework," he muttered.
"Yes, I did. Why don't you believe me?" I cried, with as much passion as if I were denying I had murdered someone.
He looked, up, his face pained.
"Okay," he said. "Sorry. Don't have a nervous breakdown."
"Don't forget we're heading up to Grandmother Stein's this Saturday, Zipporah," my mother said. She already had told me twice that we were visiting my father's mother at the adult residence in Liberty, New York. She had been moved there when it became clear that she couldn't look after herself. Since both my parents worked, it would have been impossible to have her live with us. At least the Liberty residence was close.
"Okay," I