The Half Brother Read Online Free PDF Page B

could see a sculptured heap of bikes and camping gear, and in the side yard were tomato cages with dried vines left over from the summer. A little sloppier than I would have expected from a woman like Florence, but I chalked up the disorderto the boys, who were still in and out on weekends, and to a cheerful ethos of industry, of numerous projects in various states of completion.
    “I think perhaps Florence imagined something different,” Divya said. Win radiated silence. “She’s from some very old family, down south. And what’s her father again? Win?”
    “He’s a bishop. In Virginia.”
    So Florence Bankhead had had thoughts of something bigger: a grand rectory somewhere, visiting dignitaries. And southern warmth. Instead she was stuck here, ninety miles from Boston, at the Abbott School—a place genteelly clinging to the second tier, New-England-boarding-schools-wise. A place I already loved, but maybe she did not.
    I wanted to ask more, but I resisted, and Divya, seeming to sense my restraint, reached for my plate to give me seconds, whether to reward me or fortify me I wasn’t sure. “It’s not a big mystery,” she said. “I just think they’re not as well matched as they seem to be. Those two.” She handed me back my plate. “Henry will be happy,” she said, as though I’d asked. “Don’t worry.” The eyebrow again. “There are far worse things than being kicked out of one preparatory school and going to another one. My God.”
    “So there’s just the daughter left,” I said.
    “May.”
    “Poor kid,” Win said. “I wouldn’t want to rattle around in that place with Preston and Florence, I’ll tell you that.”
    “ Win ship.”
    “Well, I wouldn’t,” he said, and Divya looked obscurely pleased.
    I had just about given up on figuring out Preston’s purported magic. Sometimes, during a sermon, especially if he was quoting, say, Eliot or Auden, I felt a tingling of uncanny inspiration, a nerdy mind-meld that made me giddy. Now I have something to tell him . But up close, he seemed surprised that anyone, including me, would feel a claim to him.
    Now, in the hallway beyond the wide living room door I saw, and heard, the boys whiz by. Ram wore a crown and a cape; Anil, in a cowboy hat, was whacking at him from behind with a thing that I thought was a sword but then realized was a wand, tipped with a silverstar. “I have turned you into a toad!” he howled. “Quit running! Quit running!”
    “I’m hopping !” Tremendous thumping up the stairs.
    “How was your vacation, Charlie?” Divya asked. “How was Atlanta?”
    I told them a little about the enormous Christmas dinner (table for twenty, multiple forks) at Bobo and Big Hugh’s, my step-grandparents’, one of the usual command performances that no one seemed to mind but my mother and me.
    “You’re a regular southern gentleman,” Divya said.
    “I guess you don’t know many southern gentlemen.”
    She tilted her head. “Do you feel like a foreign person there?”
    I felt a familiar shame: I needed to appreciate what I had. “It’s where I was born and raised. So that wouldn’t make any sense, would it?”
    “It’s very hard to go home,” Divya said.
    “Div knows what that’s like,” Win said. “But you came here knowing you wouldn’t go back, didn’t you, Div?”
    “Ha. I was forced to stay,” Divya said serenely. “I was cajoled.”
    “You wanted to be cajoled.”
    “So wise, Win Lowell,” Divya said. “So wise.”
    Her voice lilted along. I loved that voice. I wanted to ask her to read me a bedtime story.
    The flames of the fire licked and rose; the childlike paintings glowed on the walls. I thought of Divya’s palm hovering. Win ignored her, or seemed to, but happiness moved, nearly imperceptible, like a slow ocean swell over his face.
    ONE DAY I RETURNED home to find Angela Middleton in the driveway unloading her minivan, the baby clinging precariously to her hip, the two older kids in full tantrum,