Under Shifting Glass Read Online Free PDF

join, and then she draws the blanket back around them.
    I realize then I don’t know what the babies are named.
    â€œRichie,” says Mom, “after Si’s father. And Clem, after mine.”

15
    It seems to be enough for Mom. She lies back and closes her eyes and the nurse comes and takes the babies away again. I think Si would like to lift them himself, but he doesn’t dare. Maybe he feels they are too fragile, that he’d hurt them.
    Mom seems to have gone into an almost immediate sleep, and just for a moment, I feel we might all be just some dream of hers—me and Si and Gran and the babies, all rather unlikely conjurings of her exhausted brain. And then, as I watch her chest rise and fall, I think about the flask and that seems like an even deeper dream. I had planned to tell Mom about the flask, how I found it in the desk and how it was full of something unearthly, something beautiful and scary at the same time, and how I captured it, because I feel fierce and soft toward it, just like Si does toward the twins, butthat I also feel bad because, as Mr. Brand says, you can’t catch things that are supposed to be wild and free and . . .
    â€œI think we ought to go now,” says Gran.
    â€œMom . . .” I say.
    â€œShh,” says Si. “She needs to rest.”

16
    By the time we get back home, it is almost dark.
    â€œWho’s that?” Gran asks as we turn into our driveway.
    It’s Zoe, of course, knocking at our front door. She turns as she hears the car pull up. I roll down my window.
    â€œWant to come to the park?” she asks.
    Zoe and I often go to the park at dusk. It’s one of our little rituals. We swing on the swings after all the little kids have gone home. We swing and talk. Or Zoe dances. She dances around the swan on its large metal spring. She dances along the wooden logs that are held up by chains. She back-flips off the slide. When she’s tired, which isn’t often, we lie together on our backs in the half-moon swing and look at the sky. Or I look at the sky, anyway. She looks upward, but what she sees I don’t know, because peoplecan look in the same place but not see the same things, can’t they?
    â€œBit late for the park,” says Gran.
    But I want to go to the park because I want some private time with Zoe. I want to tell her how beautiful my brothers are, after all; I want to take time, sharing all the details of those little birds and the web of their join. I want to look in her eyes, see myself reflected in the mirror of her, the big sister of two baby boys.
    â€œPlease,” I say to Gran. “Just for half an hour.”
    I also want to tell Zoe about the flask.
    â€œWell,” says Gran. She looks at her watch. “Oh, all right then. Just while I make dinner.”
    â€œThanks, Gran,” I say, and I actually lean over and give her a kiss.
    Zoe doesn’t know we’ve just come from the hospital and I don’t tell her. I want to be lying in the half-moon when I tell her about the babies. I want her to be the first to know, as she was about the join. A special moment, shared. Luckily, as we head down the cul-de-sac, she’s already chatting to me, telling me about her sister’s boyfriend and his new car and how her mother won’t let the boyfriend drive Zoe around but doesn’t mind him driving her sister around, which is ridiculous and . . .
    And soon we’re at the park and Paddy and Sam are there, too, with a soccer ball and two sweaters to mark a goal. Paddy isn’t Paddy’s real name; his real name is Maxim, but he doesn’t look like a Maxim so everyone calls him Paddy. He has a big, round, smiling face and he bounces through life like a beach ball. Happy and full of air. Or, at least, that’s what I think. Zoe thinks he’s massively handsome and has an Outstanding Sense of Humor. It’s Paddy, in fact, who Zoe has her eyes