The Way Back to Happiness Read Online Free PDF

well, the fact is, Gladys, we do have the one-week guest policy.”
    “Tough tiddlywinks,” Gladys parried. “We also have a no dogs policy, yet there’s Bonnie Tucker on the second floor with her ridiculous poodle. Who I like, by the way. I like the dog better than Bonnie, to tell you the truth. I’m happy an exception was made for Noodles.”
    “Yes, but . . .” Brenda clearly hadn’t anticipated Gladdie’s drawing a comparison between her granddaughter’s situation and a poodle’s. “People . . . that is, many residents . . . are beginning to ask how long this can go on. It’s against policy,” she insisted. “I need to be able to tell them something. . . .”
    “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” Gladdie said. “You might tell them that .”
    When Brenda was gone, Gladdie aimed a scowl at the living room rug. Anxiety about her future shook Alabama. If she couldn’t stay with Gladdie, what would happen to her?
    “Do they still have orphanages?” Alabama asked.
    “Don’t be ridiculous,” Gladdie said. “You’re not an orphan.”
    Maybe she meant that Alabama still had relatives. But so did Anne of Green Gables, Heidi, that girl in The Secret Garden, Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz . . . All those characters had a grandparent or an uncle or something, but it was the no-mother-and-no-father thing that made them orphans. Alabama’s father had died before she was born, and now she was motherless. She couldn’t have been any more an orphan if she’d clapped a red wig on her head and started belting out “Tomorrow.”
    “Well, technically, maybe you are,” Gladdie allowed. “Ever since Diana . . .” Unable to finish the thought, she tottered toward her cabinet of solace and pulled out her crutch reserved for moments of high tension—her jar of candied orange slices. Those and her ever-present rolls of Tums were all she ever snacked on.
    She tore open an orange slice with her razor-sharp nails and bit off half. The gumdrop consistency of the candy caused her jaw to pop as she chewed, and Alabama sensed that the effort of keeping all her dental work in place helped hold Gladdie’s tears at bay.
    “If only Diana had said something to me about how bad things were . . . maybe I could have done more.”
    “You know how Mom was,” Alabama said, automatically wanting to comfort her, even though she didn’t like the implication that her mother’s accident was caused by their financial situation. She’d walked in front of a truck. What did that have to do with money?
    “I thought I was doing more,” Gladdie continued. “When she called me and asked for money to send you to that camp, it sounded like a good thing—get you out of the city for a week, and let Diana have some time by herself to unwind.”
    Alabama had relived that week a thousand times. Her mom alternating between overblown excitement about the camp and catatonic depression. The ever-present prescription bottle on the coffee table. Her own fear, mixed with irritation. At times she wanted to scrap the whole idea of going. She was too old for camp, wasn’t she? But in the next moment the desire to get away, to breathe fresh air, and to not worry about anything for once in her life would overwhelm her.
    She couldn’t believe now that she’d ever wanted to leave her mom. Even for a second.
    “If I’d only known how things really were,” Gladdie said, “she might not have—”
    Alabama jumped up. “She didn’t do anything! It was an accident.”
    Gladdie’s eyes widened, and after a moment, she nodded. A tear slipped out of the corner of her eye.
    Despite Gladdie’s assurances, after the tapioca incident Alabama became more nervous than ever that she would be packed off to New Sparta. That couldn’t be allowed to happen. She had to do something.
    “If I can’t live here at The Villas,” she told Gladdie later that afternoon, “then I wish I could rent a place of my own nearby.”
    Gladdie hooted at