There Was an Old Woman Read Online Free PDF Page B

had, threw open the door. It slammed against the inside wall. She caught a flurry of movement in the sunny, slope-ceilinged room. A whirl of gray disappeared through the back window facing the water. Then another.
    Evie stood in the middle of the room, her heart pounding, and took in the damage. All in all, it was not nearly as bad as she’d feared. The seat of the skirted chair at the dressing table was torn open, some of its stuffing mounded like massive dustballs on the floor. There were acorns and sticks on the floor. But the beds she and Ginger slept in, tucked under the eaves, were unmussed, still covered with the familiar pink-and-white chenille bedspreads.
    It took her a moment to realize that the window wasn’t open. It was broken. The bottom pane was completely gone. But there seemed to be no glass on the floor of the room. She looked out through the broken window. Shards of glass glittered just outside on the porch’s sloping roof. Didn’t that mean that the window had been broken from the inside?

Chapter Six
    Before Evie left the upstairs bedroom, she took down from the wall the framed Georgia O’Keeffe poster—a white camellia blooming out of a field of pale blue and turquoise—that she and Ginger had picked up at an after-Christmas sale at the Met. She found some duct tape in the kitchen and used it to secure the picture over the broken window. At least that would keep squirrels and wet weather out until she could get the window properly replaced.
    Downstairs, she put away the broom and gloves. Her parents’ bedroom and bath were the only rooms left to assess.
    She felt her way through the dark downstairs hallway to the tiny room tucked under the stairs, opened the door, and peered in. The familiar room, barely big enough for her parents’ double bed and two bureaus, smelled like a rank subway tunnel. Wrinkled clothing covered the bed. Evie recognized the pink terry-cloth robe she and Ginger had given their mother for a Mother’s Day years ago. More ashtrays on the bureaus overflowed with cigarette butts. Evie raised the window shades and tried to open the windows, but they wouldn’t budge.
    Her mother’s bottle of Jean Naté sat on the bureau, as always. Evie unscrewed the top and poured a little into her hands. The scent reminded her of fresh laundry and lemon meringue pie. It was what her mother smelled like after a shower. And sometimes, her father had smelled of it, too.
    Evie closed the bottle and put it back.
    When she shifted the clothing on the bed, she realized that the bedding beneath was damp and smelled sour. She stripped the sheets. The mattress was wet, too.
    Working quickly and trying not to gag, she balled the sheets up with the dirty clothes, hauled the bundle out through the front door, and dumped it by the side of the house. As she stood there, hands on her hips, taking great gulps of fresh air and girding herself for hauling out the mattress, a red sports car rolled up and pulled into the driveway across the street. That house was spruced up and freshly painted in shades of tan, maroon, and a deep green, the bushes in front sculpted into perfect spheres—all that tidiness a tacit rebuke to her mother’s house. A man Evie didn’t recognize got out and looked across the street. He gave her a puzzled look and raised his hand.
    Evie turned away and went inside. She didn’t know him and had no desire to explain the mess her mother had made. By the time she’d wrestled the mattress off her mother’s bed, set it on end, and shoved it out the front door, the man had disappeared. She pushed, pulled, and dragged the mattress up the side of the house where she propped it under the bathroom window, leaning the nasty side, soiled and pitted with cigarette burns, against the house.
    That’s when she heard a steady drip, drip, drip coming from beneath the house. Under the bathroom. She stooped and looked through a hole in the