The Uninvited Read Online Free PDF

and my family is . . . um . . .” I braced my hands on my hips. “Well, we’re not doing well. I’ve decided to head out into the world and live my own life now. Sort of”—I forced a smile to my face—“burst out of my cocoon, so to speak.”
    May merely blinked in response at first, but then she arched a dark eyebrow and said, “You picked one hell of a time to spread your wings, little butterfly.”
    “Yes, I suppose I—”
    “Have you heard about this wicked flu?”
    “I already had it, just this past week. How about you?”
    She leaned her right hip against the doorjamb. “I had a terrible headache the other day. I thought I might be getting sick, but then I sat down for a spell and recovered.” She picked at the little nail of her left pinky. “Which was a shame.”
    “What?” I leaned forward. “How on earth is recovering a shame?”
    “I thought God might have sent this flu to help all us Widow Street girls join our darling husbands. That would’ve been kind of Him.”
    I swallowed and debated how to respond to a statement such as that.
    “Do you have an income that would allow you to pay rent?” she asked.
    “Yes. I’ve been teaching piano lessons to children out at my family’s house for the past seven years.”
    “ ‘Tickling the Ivories with Ivy’?”
    “Yes.” I blushed. “That’s the slogan I use on my card.”
    “I’ve seen your card in the music store window. How did you put it there if you’re a recluse?”
    “I don’t actually . . .” I cleared my throat and leaned forward on my toes. “I don’t personally call myself a recluse. But my brother Billy hung that up for me. He helped me find students before he . . . before . . .” I gestured with my thumb to the east. Toward France.
    She nodded in understanding.
    “Do you play an instrument?” I asked. “Is that why you were in the music store?”
    “No.” She toyed with another nail—the one at the tip of her left ring finger, on which she still wore a gold wedding band, I noticed. “The store’s just next to the beauty parlor where I get my hair done.”
    “Ah.” I grabbed up my bags. “Well, I’m really sorry to have troubled you this morning.”
    “Hey.” She cocked her head again. “Even if you are a recluse—”
    “I told you, I don’t call myself—”
    “Even if you’re a tad on the shy side, don’t you have any other old school friends who’d take you in, besides handsome Eddie’s widow?”
    I backed down the porch steps and debated if I should mention a word about Helen, a principal player in Buchanan’s first-most-notorious adultery story. Or Sigrid Landvik, who ended up marrying Wyatt Pettyjohn, an old beau of mine of sorts. “My closest friend moved out of town just this past summer,” I decided to say, and it was the truth. Helen left town with Buchanan’s exiled German, Mr. Weiss.
    “You’ve never married, then?” asked May, shading her eyes from the morning sun with her left hand, the light glinting off her gold band.
    “No, I’m an old twenty-five-year-old spinster, I’m afraid.” I offered a thin smile and turned to leave.
    “Not any more, you’re not.”
    I stopped. “I beg your pardon?”
    May pushed her door farther open with the tips of her fingers. “You’re not just an old spinster anymore. You’re now the distinguished first-ever boarder at Dover’s Home for Women of Independent Means.”
    “But—”
    “You said you have an income, right?”
    “Yes.”
    “And I have the spare room. I soured on the idea of a boarder when Eddie got killed, but maybe I should talk to someone else besides myself and ghosts.”
    “Ghosts?”
    “It’s just a manner of speaking.” She nodded toward the house’s interior. “Come inside. I’ll show you the room.”
    “Th-thank you. Oh my goodness, thank you.” I hoisted up my luggage and ran back up to the porch with my square heels clomping all over the place.
    May led me inside a small front room with pale