The Forever Stone Read Online Free PDF

Bria cleaned the parlor until it smelled of soap and wet wood. Better than mildew. Bria had carried the rocking chair out onto the porch and then returned to mop with swift, competent strokes, but she’d worked in silence.
    While they ate lunch, the girl answered Madeleine’s questions, but her answers were brief, as if it might be hazardous to give out more information than necessary. Yes, she had a brother. Jude. He was fourteen. They lived in the woods with their mother and grandmother, not too far away. She didn’t say anything about a father.
    Was she merely shy? Perhaps. But her reticence was edged with caution, as if she were a wild creature in dangerous territory.
    After lunch, Madeleine said, “Let’s explore. Have you seen any of those rooms upstairs?”
    Bria shook her head, and curiosity gleamed in the brown eyes.
    The staircase had a graceful balustrade of honey-colored wood, but the carpet looked like a matted green rag. Madeleine could hear her aunt saying, “This goes too.”
    They found a library of dusty books, a girlish-looking pink bedroom that might have been Cousin Henrietta’s, and a modernized bathroom. At the back of the house was a locked room.
    “I’ll have to get the key,” Madeleine said, scribbling in the margin of her notebook.
    They took a quick tour of the crowded all-yellow bedroom across from the library and looked into the storage room beside it. Bria made a sound that might have been a giggle and pointed to a stuffed owl glaring at them from a plant stand. “Looks like he’s guarding those trunks.”
    “Maybe he is,” Madeleine said. “You never know about treasure.”
    Trunks , she wrote in her notebook. Inventory contents.
    She glanced at her watch. “Perhaps we should check on brushes and things, so we can paint tomorrow.”
    “I looked in the pantry,” Bria said. “There’s paint, but no brushes.”
    “Aunt Lin told me that we could get supplies at Timothy’s store. When does it close?”
    “Not ever,” Bria said. “He lives upstairs, and if someone bangs hard enough, he’ll come down.”
    “Good. I’ll grab my purse, and you can show me the way.”
    Timothy’s store might have stood on its corner for a hundred years. Its walls had weathered to silver gray, and it leaned toward the street as if wearied by the weight of its dormers and the thick, dark roof.
    Inside, half a dozen customers strolled past canned goods, hardware, medicines, and camping equipment stacked to the ceiling. The walls displayed everything from tools and fishing gear to paintings by local artists.
    A rosy-faced old man stood talking to Timothy at the counter, but when he saw them, he tucked a package of toilet tissue under his arm and picked up a bulging plastic bag. He shuffled past with a nod, his eyes inquisitive beneath shaggy brows and a bald head. His red plaid shirt was almost as wrinkled as his face, and his jeans sagged over dusty sneakers. One of Uncle Ashton’s Pineys?
    After he’d gone, Madeleine asked Bria, “Who’s that?”
    “Dan’l Forbes. He’s lived here forever.”
    She didn’t ask anything more because Timothy was saying, “Hello, young ladies! How can I help you today?” His wizened little face was so cheerful, his brown eyes so lively, that the room seemed to brighten.
    “We’re going to be painting,” Madeleine said. “So we need some brushes.”
    “Brushes we have in abundance.” He limped purposefully out from behind the counter, one shoulder hunched a little higher than the other.
    Bria had gone ahead of them, but Madeleine stayed beside the old man. “I have a favor to ask,” she said. “My aunt mentioned that you have wireless here. Could you possibly let me use it until we get ours?”
    He slowed his halting pace. “Certainly. Anytime. How’s the writing business coming?”
    Aunt Lin must have told him about her website that offered editing services.
    “It’s not. I closed it . . . a while ago.”
    Had her reply been too abrupt? She