The House of Memories Read Online Free PDF Page B

mother?”
    “Very well, thank you,” I said, trying not to smile as I searched for a biscuit in one of the tins and found a few moldy crumbs instead.
    “Still mad as ever, I suppose?”
    I nodded.
    “And still famous?”
    “Getting more famous every day too.” It was true. In the past six years, after a chance encounter with a TV crew in a Melbourne shopping center, my mother had somehow become a household name in Australia. Walter was now her full-time manager. It was unfathomable to me. My mother had barely boiled an egg during my childhood. Now she was a celebrity TV chef.
    “Charlie seems as happy as ever in Boston.”
    I nodded again. Charlie the happy househusband, father of four and adored/adoring husband of Lucy, a sales representative for a medical company. They’d met when Charlie was seventeen and in the US as a Rotary exchange student. After becoming pen pals, they’d met again when they were both in their mid-twenties and Lucy was visiting Australia. They’d fallen in love, married and immediately begun having children. Their youngest was four years old, the oldest nearly eleven. Lucy worked full-time while Charlie stayed at home, in an arrangement that suited them both.
    “I do enjoy his family reports,” Lucas said. “Thank you for adding me to his mailing list. The one about the children at the dentist was like a comedy sketch.”
    I couldn’t think of anything to say to that. I’d stopped reading Charlie’s e-mail about his family. I was still in touch with Charlie about other things, of course. We e-mailed often, both of us carefully choosing our words, avoiding certain subjects. Charlie did all his communicating via computer, late at night, once the kids and Lucy were in bed. His family reports were e-mailed to only a few people—Walter, Mum, Jess, Lucas and me. They were his way of staying sane, he’d confessed to me once. They always had the same subject line, a play on words from Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon stories. The original began:
It’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.
Charlie’s was:
It’s been a noisy week in Boston.
I missed his stories of family life. But I couldn’t read them anymore.
    “And Jess?” Lucas asked. “How is she?”
    At the sink, midway through pouring the boiling water, I stiffened.
    He must have noticed. He waited a moment, then repeated his question.
    I turned. “Lucas, I’m sorry. I can’t—”
    He spoke again in the same calm tone. “Is she still writing her autobiography?”
    I knew that piece of news about Jess years earlier had amused him. Jess had been writing her life story—in diary form—for the past six years, since she was sixteen years old. She’d always been convinced she’d be a musical theater star one day. “I’ll be too busy when I’m famous to write anything, so I’m doing it now to save time,” she’d told us all. She’d never been secretive about it either. Other teenage girls probably hid their diaries from their families. Jess did formal readings from hers. They were written as she spoke, in a stream of consciousness. The title was the first line of each day’s diary entry:
Hi, it’s Jess!
    “I don’t know,” I said, not looking at him. It was the truth. I had no idea where Jess was or what she was doing. I’d asked my mother not to mention her. She’d eventually, reluctantly, agreed.
    Lucas didn’t ask any more questions about her. Another reason to love him. An aunt might have kept on at me, as my mother had, many times.
Please, Ella, she’s your little sister. Your family. You have to find a way to forgive her. You have to be able to move on somehow.
    But how could I move on? Where was there for me to go?
    There was one other person for Lucas to ask about. As I brought over the tea, I waited for him to mention Aidan. He didn’t. Not yet. But he would, I knew. I could almost feel Aidan’s presence in the kitchen between us. We’d met for the first time in here.
    Lucas took a sip, pulled a face