The Whole Truth Read Online Free PDF

safe, even when they went over bumps, because Daddy was there to protect her.
    Please, God, take care of Daddy,
Polly prayed. She kept imagining being on the bike with him as she tried to sleep again, clutching one of the bed rails as if she were keeping herself from drowning.

CHAPTER THREE
SUNDAY
    S he was skating, gliding across a lake. Daddy was zooming ahead of her and Polly laughed as she tried to catch up with him. Then Daddy fell through the ice and disappeared. Polly tried to scream, but no sound came.
    A piercing whistle startled Polly awake. She sat up with relief. The whistle had come from Maud, of course.
    Polly yawned away the bad dream. “What time is it?”
    Maud grinned. “It’s almost nine o’clock—I’ve been up for hours!”
    “Who braided your hair?” asked Polly, stumbling out of bed.
    “Noni. She called me into her room—she has breakfast in bed! She did a good job, don’t you think?”
    Maud helped Polly choose clothes for church. “Noni says we don’t have to wear our mourning dresses any more. She doesn’t believe in black clothes for children.”
    Polly smiled for the first time since she’d left Winnipeg. She’d worn her itchy black dress every day for the past week. The fabric was so cheap that it made dark smears on her skin, and the sleeves were split under the arms.
    Polly had lots of other dresses; they were hand-me-downs from Maud. She picked out her favourite blue gingham one. Then she remembered that she hadn’t worn coloured clothes since before it happened, and her delight in the dress vanished.
    “It’s nice to see you in that again,” said Maud. “I wish I had something better to wear to church.”
    Since the depression had started there had been no money for new clothes. Polly remembered the day Maud had come home from school mortified because a well-off girl in her class had recognized the dress Maud had got from the Goodwill truck. Maud was wearing it this morning. It was too short for her and stretched tightly across her chest.
    “Oh, well,” said Maud. “Noni said she’d buy me new dresses in Victoria as well as my uniform.”
    “Is Noni rich, like Mrs. Tuttle said?” Polly asked.
    “She must be. She has this big house and a housekeeper, and she’s paying for my school.”
    “But she doesn’t even have an indoor toilet!” Polly shuddered.
    “That’s just because this is an island.” Maud began brushing out Polly’s curls. “Noni asked why you’re so silent, Doodle. She was relieved that you at least speak to
me.
I didn’t know what to tell her.”
    “I just can’t talk to them, that’s all,” said Polly.
    “I guess you will when you’re ready. That’s what I told Noni. Come on, let’s have breakfast. I waited for you and I’m starving!”
    Maud was remarkably cheerful this morning. Had she forgotten why they were here? But Polly couldn’t help feeling more cheerful herself on such a bright day.
    The privy was a little less scary by daylight, but Polly still held her nose. On the way back to the house she paused to gaze at the view. This morning the sea looked like a wrinkled grey skin. Gullssoared and warbled and some black birds with long necks were perched on a log.
    When she came in the kitchen door, Mrs. Hooper handed Polly a huge bowl of oatmeal and cream. “We need to fatten you up!” she told her.
    Mrs. Hooper poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down at the table with Maud and Polly, gazing at them just as greedily as she had the day before. “All these years we’ve longed to see you, and here you are at last!” she told them. “Polly, you look so much like your mother it’s uncanny! My, it’s nice to have young ones in the house again.”
    Polly spooned soft brown sugar over the oatmeal. It was so delicious that she ate half the bowlful.
    “What was our mother like?” asked Maud.
    Mrs. Hooper chuckled. “Una was a scamp—loud and stubborn and determined to get her own way. Do you remember her at all,