The Uninvited Read Online Free PDF Page A

potential piano students if I attended Buchanan’s Independence Day festivities.
    I remembered what May looked like. She could have waltzed straight out of a Hollywood motion picture, even in her plain cotton dress and floppy straw hat that hid her dark ringlets. Billy referred to her as “Buchanan’s Vamp.” Father and Peter couldn’t keep their eyes off her and the v -shaped dip in her flimsy white bodice, as I recalled from the picnic. “Eddie’s jazzy new wife was a souvenir from his last big weekend in Chicago before enlisting,” my friend Helen had said when she joined me at the picnic, twirling her finger around a red curl with a hint of jealousy, for she had once kissed Eddie at a dance. Eddie sat beside May on a blue gingham blanket and gazed at his wife as if she were a chocolate sundae topped with a voluptuous crimson cherry. As if he wanted to lick her all over until she melted in a flood of vanilla and red lipstick.
    The Dovers’ tapioca-colored home rose up ahead, beyond two trees ablaze with autumn leaves. I spotted the red mailbox out by the street, as Mr. Greene instructed, and noticed Eddie’s family name painted on the side of the box in flowery white handwriting. A weather vane topped with a galloping silver horse pointed to the west, above an upstairs dormer window.
    I climbed the steps to the wide front porch and reminded myself, This is the start of your new life, Ivy. No more worrying. No headaches. Just living.
    I knocked on the door, and I waited.
    Childish voices and laughter chirped from the backyard in the neighboring house to the right. The weather vane above me squeaked a little from a nudge of the breeze.
    I knocked a second time and then turned to leave, discouraged, when footsteps approached from the other side of the door. The latch clicked. The door opened. There she stood.
    Mrs. Eddie Dover.
    The Vamp.
    She blinked her eyes like she’d just woken up from a long and luxurious nap, and her fingers lazily buttoned up her midnight-black blouse, as if she’d just slipped out of bed and gotten herself dressed. Thick ringlets the color of velvety ink spilled down her shoulders to the famous May Belmont Dover breasts that Peter spoke of often, when he didn’t think I could hear him. The buttonholes of her shirt strained to keep those mountainous curves inside.
    “Can I help you?” she asked in a drowsy voice.
    “Yes, hello. Umm . . .” I readjusted my bags in my hands. “I’m looking to rent a room. Mr. Greene at the Hotel America said you used to have a sign advertising space for a boarder.”
    “He did?” She peeked out the door in the direction of Mr. Greene and his business, even though the hotel stood three blocks away, beyond other houses and trees. “I haven’t had that sign hanging up since summer.”
    “Well, he brought up your name, and—”
    “Didn’t I meet you once? You look familiar.”
    “Yes, we met at last year’s Fourth of July picnic. I knew your husband in school.”
    She rolled her eyes. “ Every girl in Buchanan knew Eddie in school.”
    “I didn’t know him well. You’ve probably never even heard of me. My name’s Ivy.”
    “Ohh . . .” She tilted her head and nodded with little dips of her delicate chin. “Oh, yes. I think I might remember you now. Eddie said he hadn’t seen you since you finished high school together. He said you never left your house. Called you a recluse.”
    “Well . . . I . . .”
    “Are you running away from home or something?”
    My hands sweated on the handles of my luggage. “I-I-I beg your pardon?”
    “You have that desperate look about you.” She crossed her arms and peered down the street again. “Is an irate husband about to show up and cause a scene?”
    “A . . . what?”
    “Or are you a war widow, too?”
    The muscles in my arms ached and shook to the point where I had to plunk down the bags on her porch. “No, I’m not a widow. One of my brothers just lost his life in France, though,