Silent Kills Read Online Free PDF

like great stooping crows—their long yellow faces didn’t even look human. They gazed down at his sister Edwina, her tiny body swallowed in a sea of pillows, swathed in blankets and bandages.
    Davey turned to look at his mother, whose face was swollen from crying. Her lips were puffy and her nose was a mottled red color, reminding him of a boiled lobster he had seen once in a restaurant.
    “Go on, Davey,” she said. “Go kiss your sister.”
    He couldn’t understand why he had to kiss his sister. Edwina appeared to be asleep, and what if she woke up just as Davey got there? What if she started to cry, or worse, made the terrible moaning sound that she had been emitting for days—a weak, tormented groaning that Davey could hear in his own bedroom? It came right through the walls. He stacked pillows over his head to drown it out at night, but not even a pile of pillows could keep Davey from hearing the terrible bleating sound. Sometimes it made his heart hurt for his sister, and sometimes he hated his sister—hated her for making his mother cry, for keeping everyone up at night, and for making Davey feel so sorry for her.
    Mostly, though, he hated how the family’s life had changed. Everything was different now. Everyone walked softly and spoke in low voices; it was all about Edwina’s illness, and Davey felt like a ghost, unseen and unheard. When he talked, his mother would pretend to listen, but he knew her mind was on Edwina and how she was feeling today. His father didn’t even pretend to listen. He had barely spoken to Davey these past weeks, when Edwina took a turn for the worse. That’s what his Aunt Sarah called it—“a turn for the worse”—though he had no idea what that meant.
    He tiptoed around the house and heard snippets of conversation about his sister. He tried to make sense of the words and phrases: “blood disorder,” “clotting factor,” “faulty genes,” and so on. He memorized what he heard, even if he didn’t understand it; he was a bright boy, though no one seemed to know or care. Eventually, he came to understand that there was something wrong with his sister’s blood, that it ran in the family, and that this terrible affliction could skip a generation. If he had children, for example, they too could sicken and die young. Davey developed a fear that the rest of his family would also become ill—and that it was only a matter of time before he himself sickened and died.
    And even though he was only a child, he knew Edwina was dying. Though Davey was only seven, he saw the unnatural paleness of his sister’s skin, all the roses gone from her cheeks, and the gradual weakening after one of her “attacks.” She wasn’t allowed to run, to play, to fall on the ground and roll in the grass like other children. After a while, she wasn’t allowed to do anything. And then she was too weak to want to.
    Edwina was only five, but she was dying. And the thought filled Davey with mortal terror and unbearable sadness.
    Just as he approached his sister’s bed, he had a warm, wet feeling in his pants, then a thin tickling sensation down the inside of his leg. He heard his Aunt Sarah gasp.
    “Oh, lord, the boy’s wet himself!”
    Overcome by shame and humiliation, Davey turned and fled the room.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    “You want to get something to eat?” Kathy said. “I’m starving.”
    They were wandering down Broadway after the concert, approaching the lights of Times Square, its wanton neon casually splashed against the canvas of sky, as if someone had tossed a can of paint heavenward. The air was warm and inviting, a perfect night for strolling about aimlessly.
    “You’re always hungry,” Lee said as they passed a souvenir shop, its polished plate-glass windows stuffed with trinkets for tourists: tiny green replicas of the Statue of Liberty, baseball caps proclaiming I LOVE NY , postcards of the Chrysler and Empire State buildings. He wondered if they still sold postcards of the World