Silent to the Bone Read Online Free PDF

out with anyone he had worked with, but Tina was something different. For one thing, she was not a student.
    Tina Nguyen represented something new in Dr. Z’s lab as well as in his life. She was already a Ph.D. when she arrived at the university. She was a molecular biologist working on identifying genes associated with complex genetic traits. She answered an ad that Dr. Zamborska had put in The Journal of Genetic Research because she wanted a challenge. She came to work at the start of the summer term in June, and they had gone out together a couple of times even before Bran had to leave for Florida. Bran never told me much about Tina except to say that she had a lot in common with his father. She was brilliant. She was interested in the Genome. And she rode a bicycle everywhere.
    What Bran didn’t know was how much time they had been spending together in the lab, cultivating more than just DNA.
    I was at summer camp part of the time that Branwell was at The Lovely Condominium. I left home a week before he did, so I got home a week before him, and when I did, you had only to see Tina and Dr. Zamborska together to know how full of each other they were. They could hardly keep their hands off each other, which made a lot of people smile, but to tell you the truth, I found it a little embarrassing, and I wondered if Branwell would, too.
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    Margaret said, “I have no doubt that Dr. Zamborska is brilliant, but he is also stupid. He had always treated Branwell like a grown-up, and I guess he thought that Branwell would take the news like a man, but he had no business letting all that love between him and Tinaripen while Branwell was away and never even sending out a hint. When our father abandoned me, I at least still had a mother. But when Dr. Zamborska fell in love with Tina, Branwell was just left out.”

DAY EIGHT

5.
    There was good news about Nikki. The pressure inside her skull had gone down and stayed down, and the doctor removed the tube from her brain. When the guard brought Branwell into the visitors’ room, I got the feeling that he was glad to see me. It could only be a feeling, because he certainly wasn’t telling me so, but something positive was definitely there, and I don’t think there is any feeling I like more than the one that someone is glad to see me.
    I watched Bran’s face brighten when I told him the good news about Nikki.
    But after that, when I started telling him what Margaret had told me about his homecoming the summer before last, he seemed to sink back into himself.When I got to the part about how embarrassing it had been to see how Dr. Zamborska and Tina could hardly keep their hands off each other, he just stared across the room. I looked over at the wall he was staring at to see if I could see what he was seeing, but, of course, I couldn’t. Whatever he was seeing was inside his head, and it made him as lonely as his silence. I wished I had skipped that part, but it was too late. You can’t unsay what has been said.
    To make him feel better (or maybe to make myself feel better) I told him that I was glad he had asked me to talk to Margaret. She had been there. She understood feeling left out, and she helped me understand it, too. As I said that, Branwell had a less faraway look in his eyes. I began to believe that he had chosen Margaret not because she would make him speak but because she would make me understand.
    Before I left, I took out the flash cards again and laid them on the table—all except the MARGARET one. The one that got two blinks was THE ANCESTORS.
    That was when I was certain that Branwell was not choosing the people who might make him speak. The Ancestors were hardly listener-friendly.
    The last time I had spoken to them was when Dr. Z and Tina got married in the university chapel overLabor Day weekend last year. When he saw me, Mr. Branwell said, “Connor Kane. Good name. You should have gotten Branwell’s red hair to go with