The Quiet Game Read Online Free PDF

when Sarah and I settled in Houston. Seven hours is too far to drive on a regular basis, and Mom dislikes flying. Still, the tie between us is such that distance means little. When I was a boy, people always told me I was like my father, that I’d “got my father’s brain.” But it is my mother who has the rare combination of quantitative aptitude and intuitive imagination that I was lucky enough to inherit.
    Dad shuts off the engine and unstraps Annie from her safety seat. As I unload our luggage from the trunk, I see a shadow standing motionless against the closed curtain of the dining room. My mother. Then another shadow moves behind the curtain. Who else would be here? It can’t be my sister. Jenny is a visiting professor at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland.
    â€œWho else is here?”
    â€œWait and see,” Dad says cryptically.
    I carry two suitcases to the porch, then go back for Annie’s bag. The second time I reach the porch, my mother is standing in the open door. All I can see before she rises on tiptoe and pulls me into her arms is that she has stopped coloring her hair, and the gray is a bit of a shock.
    â€œWelcome home,” she whispers in my ear. She pulls back, her hands gripping my upper arms, and looks hard at me. “You’re still not eating. Are you all right?”
    â€œI don’t know. Annie can’t seem to get past what happened. And I don’t know how to help her.”
    She squeezes my arms with a strength I have never seen fail. “That’s what grandmothers are for. Everything’s going to be all right. Starting right this minute.”
    At sixty-three my mother is still beautiful, but not with the delicate comeliness that fills so many musket-and-magnolia romances. Beneath the tanned skin and Donna Karan dress are the bone and sinew and humor of a girl who made the social journey from the 4-H Club to the Garden Club without forgetting her roots. She could take tea with royalty and commit no faux pas, yet just as easily twist the head off a banty hen, boil the bristles off a hog, or kill an angry copperhead with a hoe blade. It’s that toughness that worries me now.
    â€œMom, what’s wrong? On the phone—”
    â€œShh. We’ll talk later.” She blinks back tears, then pushes me into the house and takes Annie from Dad’s arms. “Here’s my angel! Let’s get some supper. And no yucky broccoli!”
    Annie squeals with excitement.
    â€œThere’s somebody waiting to see you, Penn,” Mom says.
    I pull the suitcases inside. A wide doorway in the foyer leads to the dining room, and I stop dead when I see who is there. Standing beside the long table is a black woman as tall as I and fifty years older. Her mouth is set in a tight smile, and her eyes twinkle with joy.
    â€œRuby!” I cry, setting the bags on the floor and walking toward her. “What in the world . . . ?”
    â€œToday’s her day off,” Mom explains from behind me. “I called to check on her, and when she heard you were coming, she demanded that Tom come get her so she could see you.”
    â€œAnd that grandbaby,” Ruby says, pointing at Annie in Peggy’s arms.
    I hug the old woman gently. It’s like hugging a bundle of sticks. Ruby Flowers came to work for us in 1963 and, except for one life-threatening illness, never missed a single workday until arthritis forced her to slow down thirty years later. Even then she begged my father to give her steroid injections to allow her to keep doing her “heavy work”—the ironing and scrubbing—but he refused. Instead he kept her on at full pay but limited her to sorting socks, washing the odd load of clothes, and watching the soaps on television.
    â€œI’m sorry about your wife,” Ruby says. “ ’Cept for losing a child, that the hardest thing.”
    I give her an extra squeeze.
    â€œNow, let me see that