The Forever Stone Read Online Free PDF Page A

the dining room, and her aunt said, “For your research, why not start by checking through each room? Make a list of what you find.”
    A list? There’d be hundreds of pieces in this room alone.
    “A general list,” her aunt added quickly. “We’re looking for anything of value, so don’t bother with the junky stuff. Soon as you find a treasure”—she smiled at her own optimism—“you can start digging into its history.”
    “Didn’t Kent say something about a library in Hammonton?” Madeleine asked. “And I brought my laptop, so I can check the Internet.”
    “I meant to tell you, our phone line is down for a couple of days.” Her aunt looked regretful. “That’s one problem with living so far out. We’re supposed to be getting cable too, but it might take weeks. So I’ve been using my company’s air card.”
    What? No Internet access here? What about her baking course? Okay, regroup. “I suppose the library has Internet,” she said.
    Her aunt nodded. “And Timothy has wireless. He wouldn’t mind your using it.”
    She turned back to the kitchen. “I’ve still got to pack, and, considering that delicious meal, I suspect that you haven’t had a minute to yourself. Don’t work too hard, Madeleine. This house will take us a long time.”
    She paused as if she were consulting a mental list. “There’s a TV set in my office. You’ll find hiking paths close to the back door. And out in the woods, after you go past that garage, we even have some genuine ruins.”
    “I’ll be okay, Aunt Lin.”
    “Good. See you in the morning.”
     
    Madeleine lifted a suitcase onto her bed and unzipped it. She’d made the obligatory phone call to her mother, and soon as she finished unpacking, she could settle down with a cookbook.
    She unfolded a sweater, and the paperweight slid into view. She picked it up, her fingers curving around the glass oval. The delicate flowers would still be lovely, the colors soft, the workmanship exquisite, but . . .
    Her breath caught in her throat.
    She tugged open a drawer, pushed the paperweight in among her socks, and let herself be distracted by the bag of apples on top of the bureau. Frances Rondell’s sympathetic face came to mind. Her mother’s face, resentful and unhappy, eclipsed it.
    She hung up her raincoat and paused, smoothing its wrinkles, thinking back. I had to come here, she told herself. To stay at home would have been the end of me.
    Soon after Brenn and her mother had formed a partnership, she’d realized how the two of them operated. Both were determined to get ahead, no matter how the truth might be shaded.
    With Dad gone, she had started to change. Brenn talked her into marrying him, Mother’s business prospered, and their ethics troubled her less and less. She became a meek little . . . mouse. Madeleine the Mouse.
    “I am mired in the slough of my own acquiescence.”
    Where had that come from? Drama Club? She’d loved memorizing the lines for those plays, but college seemed a long time ago. She shut the closet door with a snap, angry at herself, at what she had become.
    By the time she’d finished unpacking, read for a while, and written in her journal, the anger had twisted into remorse. Why didn’t I . . . How could I have let them . . . I was nothing but a . . .
    No more baggage, remember? She would brush her hair and go to bed. No more sleeping pills, either.
    The house creaked as it settled its old bones to rest. The noises from Aunt Lin’s room diminished. Something scuttled down the hall, and she pictured the tiny feet of a mouse.
    She pulled the blankets close around her neck.
    Madeleine the Mouse, push-over gal. Hunkering down to stay safe.
    Mice . . . She composed an ironic mental paragraph about the advantages of mousiness and expanded it into an essay on the subtexts in Rose Fyleman’s “I Think Mice are Nice.” When she ran out of words, there was still too much left of the night.
     
    The next morning after Aunt Lin left, she and