The Vanishing Point Read Online Free PDF

trysts. She tried to imagine what May and her lovers had done together. Her sister had never told her anything. When Hannah had begged her for details that would give life to the diagrams in Father's anatomy books and the drugged, blindfolded men strapped to the operating table, May only laughed.
Poppet, you will find out for yourself soon enough.
Sometimes May had neglected to wash herself before coming to bed and carried with her the salty smell of a man, which resembled the odor of flowering hawthorn.
    ***
    The scent of hawthorn haunted Hannah when she and her father went to church the next morning. She stared at the carved stone face of the Green Man, whose questing eyes never blinked but burned into her until she almost looked away. She tried to picture her future brother-in-law.
    After the service, Hannah lingered alone in the churchyard, winding her way among the graves. Ninety-nine yew trees grew in that churchyard. People said that if a hundredth tree were planted, it would die. Ninety-nine was the magic number that guarded the flat tabletop graves, peculiar to their village. Paths among the yew trees twisted and threaded around the limestone slabs raised altarlike to the sky.
    Hannah knelt on the grass beside her mother's grave, rested her brow against the stone. Silently she entreated her mother's bones.
Keep watch over us. Don't let anything ill befall our May.
She pricked her finger on the thorny stem of the rose that she and May had left on the grave the previous week. Licking the wound, she tasted iron in her blood.

5. The Cards
Hannah
    W EEKS LATER, as summer waned and the days grew shorter, Hannah cut onions for soup. It used to be May who helped Joan with the kitchen chores. When she was in a good mood, Joan teased Hannah, saying she would make a cook of her yet. But the onions made her eyes water, and the old knife couldn't cut properly.
    "This blade wants sharpening," Hannah said, unable to keep herself from sounding strident.
    Joan was in no mood to entertain complaints. "Cut it with your father's scalpel, then. Your sister never fussed like that."
    Hannah wished she had held her tongue. Setting down the knife, she wiped her eyes on her sleeve.
    "What is it?" Joan asked.
    "I miss her," Hannah said. "Sometimes I can't sleep for thinking about her." It was September. May should have arrived in Maryland by now, but they couldn't expect to receive a letter from her until the following summer when the ships returned from the Chesapeake.
    Joan patted her shoulder. "May has a good sister, she does." She put her face close to Hannah's. "What do you say I read the cards?" Without waiting for a reply, Joan lumbered to the far end of the kitchen where her pallet lay. "Come here, dearie. Your knees give you less pain than mine. If you tell your father, I'll skin you."
    Hannah rooted under Joan's mattress. She didn't care if fortunetelling was superstitious nonsense or deviltry. She wanted some sign of May's fate, some message of comfort.
    "Here they are." She presented Joan with the pack of cards, concealed in a knotted rag.
    Joan sat at the table and began to shuffle. Pulling up a stool, Hannah watched in silence as Joan's red fingers plucked two cards from the deck and laid them down. The three of spades and the queen of diamonds. Joan's jaw sagged.
    "What is it?" Hannah clutched Joan's wrist.
    "Spades are no good. Especially the three of spades. Now, the six of spades would be a different story altogether."
    "What does it mean?"
    "The heart pierced by three blades."
    "But this one." Hannah pointed to the other card. "The queen of diamonds. Surely this is a good card."
    Joan grunted. "It tells us nothing of her husband."
    "Then it must signify May ... her good fortune."
    Joan muttered something, then swept the cards off the table and wrapped them in the rag. "Enough for one day."
    "Joan,
tell
me! What did you see—"
    Her interrogation was cut short by a rap on the door that opened onto the study.
    "Hannah!"