Secrets at Sea Read Online Free PDF

around here and look, Helena. It’s gone back to the past.”
    I edged around to gaze over her sagging old shape, into the crystal ball.
    I staggered. There in the depths of the crystal ball was . . . the rain barrel at the corner of our house. Clear as day. It was winter, with a skim of ice across the rainwater. I couldn’t face it. My hands were over my eyes.
    â€œNever mind,” Aunt Fannie said. “They’ve been fished out and given proper burials.”
    She meant my sisters, my late sisters, Vicky and Alice. Thoughtless girls who’d ventured out across the ice on the rain barrel on a fateful day of freeze and thaw.
    And Mother, who obeyed all her instincts and scrambled up the barrel to save them. And was lost herself. All three drowned in the rain barrel. Time is always running out for us mice, and water often figures in.
    Aunt Fannie thumped the marble. “I’ve been having trouble with this thing. It’ll go in reverse, but I can’t get it turned around to tell futures. Look there.”
    Though I dreaded another view of the rain barrel, I chanced a look. The crystal ball was crowded with humans in peculiar caps and wooden shoes.
    â€œOh for pity’s sake,” I said. “It’s gone all the way back to old Dutch days.”
    â€œSee what I mean?” Aunt Fannie pointed me to my place before her. “I wish I knew who to call to get it fixed.”
    She blinked through her specs and fingered her last whisker in thought. “Never mind,” she said. “I can see one of your futures anyhow. The future that will choose you if you stay put and do not act. Not a pretty picture.”
    I worked my hands. Aunt Fannie’s pictures were rarely pretty.
    â€œFor one thing, that brother of yours needs a firm hand because he’s headed for trouble. He’s wilder than the wind, and nagging him does no good.”
    â€œWell, I try not to nag him,” I said, straightening my skirt.
    â€œYou nag,” Aunt Fannie said. “We can hear you from here.”
    She missed very little. “Then there is Louise,” she said hollowly. “Once the Upstairs Cranstons are off across the you-know-what in all the wrong dresses, you will have Louise on your hands. She is entirely too attached to Camilla Cranston, and where does that leave you?”
    Where indeed. Was Mona smirking? I wouldn’t look.
    â€œNot to mention Beatrice.” Aunt Fannie’s lenses glittered. Every niece listened. Mona’s hand stole up to her mouth.
    Beatrice? “Well, I suppose I might have left her in mouse school to finish her senior year,” I explained. “But she was learning nothing. Absolutely nothing. She doesn’t know where Europe is. And her mouth moves when she reads. I thought I could teach her better than—”
    â€œSchooling is the least of Beatrice’s problems,” Aunt Fannie said in a voice of doom.
    No niece looked at me. They looked everywhere else. Their many eyes glowed in the gloom.
    â€œBeatrice is slipping out at night, as the whole world knows,” Aunt Fannie said, “except you.”
    Beatrice? As in a dream I saw her creep out of her matchbox. Off she went into the night on tiny feet. What if it was no dream? What if it was the awful truth?
    â€œBeatrice is seeing Gideon McSorley on the sly!” Aunt Fannie announced. Her nieces gasped at this . . . cat let out of the bag.
    Lamont’s so-called friend Gideon? A McSorley? I grabbed the lace at my neck. “We’re lost.” My voice broke. “And finished as a family.”
    â€œYou can say that again,” Aunt Fannie remarked, removing a single loose thread from her shawl.
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    I TURNED TO go, my mind blank, my eyes blurry. But then behind me Aunt Fannie said,“Ah, that’s better.” I looked back. Her nose grazed the crystal ball. Her specs gleamed. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Here’s your other future,