Stone Kissed Read Online Free PDF Page A

and she’ll be here long after you are resting inside with your mother.”
    Grandmère didn’t mean to be callous. None of them did. But tact and diplomacy had no hold in hearts of stone. They spoke their truths with neither apology nor restraint. “Don’t you see, you silly child? Steward House does not belong to you. You belong to Steward House.”
    “I don’t know what she needs, or how to give it to her.”
    “And why not?”
    “I’ve been at the hospital.” Her teeth chattered. “And the lawyer’s office.”
    “Delia. The truth won’t change just because you refuse to face it.”
    In spite of the knots in her stomach Delia laughed. How many times had she huddled at the base of this statue as a young girl and listened to Grandmère lecture her? What kind of a nut job was she, to take comfort in the scolding of a piece of carved stone?
    “I’d rather move in here with you,” Delia said, not for the first time in her life.
    “ Alors , soon enough,” Grandmère replied, not for the first time in Delia’s life.
    Delia sighed and stood, bouncing on her the balls of her feet to warm up. “Okay,” she said. “It is time to see my house.”
    “Bah! It is time for the house to see sa fille. ”
    ***
    Steward House sat at the end of a gravel drive through an allée of trees. By day, she was pale gray stone, with a blush of pink. Now she was just a dark shadow.
    Grandfather Algernon had quarried the granite in the 1850s and had it cut into bricks. He’d built Steward House back when the ten acres of property had been nestled on the plateau above the river valley that cut through dark virgin forest. Since then, Stewardsville had grown up around the estate and spread like fingers up the ridges and into the narrow southern Virginia valleys.
    In the darkness at the bottom of the circle drive, Delia saw no evidence of anything wrong. She was coming home, and her heart lifted as she closed in on the house, which stood sturdy, tall and proud, its two sides opening like arms from the arch of the central entryway. Delia’s shoulder blades eased down her back, just as they had the first day her father had brought her and her still-young, still-healthy mother to live in the house inherited from the mother-in-law he despised. Remembering her childhood here was like pushing her tongue against a sore tooth, and yet Steward House called to her, welcomed her, and gave her a sense of peace and place.
    Her heart dropped a little as she stepped out of the car at the top of the circle drive and smelled the oily, thick miasma of smoke and sour chemicals. In the moonlight she saw the blackened scraps of fabric fluttering in the ground floor window and smudges of soot coating the east walls. She picked her way carefully over the yellow tape the volunteer firefighters had strung in a limp garland around the perimeter of the house and unlocked the front door. When she stepped inside, the funk of burnt oil, melted plastic and smoke coated her tongue with the flavor of guilt. Someone else— Father? —had set fire to Steward House, but it was her fault.
    “I’m sorry,” she whispered, wishing the walls would speak to her, wishing someone would forgive her. Before her parents had stripped the house of its statuary, Bert might have comforted her. The Victorian hare had stood in the front left corner of the entry, opposite the umbrella stand, but now Bert was gone. All the statues had been stripped away. Whether he’d set the fire or not, her father’s desecration of Steward House had begun years before, when she still had an excuse for behaving like a child.
    The wallpaper of the formal parlor was scorched. The blackened archway in the back of the room stood like a gaping wound, an open mouth screaming the house’s pain.
    She could leave. She didn’t want to see any more damage, and she could fix nothing in the house tonight. She hadn’t had anything to eat for hours, and she was tempted to back out the front door and