The Village by the Sea Read Online Free PDF Page B

two most important people in your life? Yet she had.
    Perhaps she was as gross as Jay Withers, a boy in her homeroom whose glittering black eyes widened with laughter when he knocked into a kid in the school corridor and made her drop her books, or yapped at stray, frightened dogs when the class was taken to the park during a recreation period. Thinking about Jay gave her a strange kind of comfort as she looked at the porch, the dining room windows behind which sat Aunt Bea. Jay was back in the city where her home was.

4
    Night Voices
    A ray of sunlight slid under the drawn shade of a dining room window and touched the bottom of the poster of Monet’s cliff with a burst of glimmering brightness. Aunt Bea must have moved during their absence, for she had changed her clothes. She was wearing a long beige linen skirt and the thick cotton sweater Emma had seen on the couch in the living room.
    The skirt was wrinkled and the sweater was full of holes, but she looked what Emma was sure her mother would call dashing. It was a puzzling thought. The last thing Aunt Bea was likely to do was to dash off anywhere. She was winding a ball of wool from a skein on the table. The teapot was steaming. There must be rivers and brooks and still ponds of tea throughout Aunt Bea’s body, thought Emma.
    â€œHere’s some divine blackberry jam I made last autumn,” Aunt Bea said, nodding toward a glass jar. “If you want to make yourself some toast …”
    â€œWhat a treat,” Uncle Crispin said and went to the kitchen. Shortly he brought back a plate of toast. Aunt Bea wound the wool steadily, her head bent over her hands. Emma stood on the other side of the table from her, not sure whether she should pull out a chair and sit down or what she should do.
    That was part of Aunt Bea’s being a terror. She forced Emma to think about every single movement she made. Uncle Crispin spread a piece of toast with jam and held it out to Emma. She took it, then before she could stop herself, she asked, “Do you know the joke about where the six-hundred pound gorilla sits down?” Uncle Crispin smiled encouragingly. Aunt Bea bent further over the wool.
    â€œWhere does he sit down?” asked Uncle Crispin.
    â€œWherever he wants to,” Emma said. She and Uncle Crispin laughed. Aunt Bea broke off the yarn and looked up unsmiling, straight at Emma.
    â€œWhen young people have heart trouble, it’s more serious for them than for old people,” she said flatly. Emma felt as if she had been suddenly slapped hard on the back and had all the air knocked out of her.
    â€œYou ought not to say that, Bea,” Uncle Crispin said, the laughter gone from his face. He looked stern and distant. Emma stole a glance at Aunt Bea. She had begun winding another ball of yarn. Her face was as blank as a sheet of paper.
    â€œThe operation is supposed to make him well,” Emma said. Her voice sounded very small in the silent room.
    â€œAnd it will,” Uncle Crispin said firmly.
    â€œOne hopes so,” murmured Aunt Bea. “Do eat your toast, Emma.”
    â€œI must put the chicken in the oven,” Uncle Crispin said, going back to the kitchen.
    Emma bit into the toast. The jam really was divine. She started to say so, but words of praise wouldn’t come to her lips. Instead, she said she wanted to go to her room and work on a puzzle. Aunt Bea looked up at the Monet poster, her hands still. She wants me to look at it, Emma thought, and I won’t. She felt thorny and sad. She finished up the toast quickly. She knew she would end up hating that poster.
    Once in her room, she closed the door and went to the table where she opened the pad of newsprint. With a blue crayon, she drew a calendar for the days she was to be away from home. It filled an entire page. She had held the crayon so tightly that her hands were streaked with blue wax. She lay down on the bed and read The Secret Garden for a while but