11 - The Book Of Old Houses by Sarah Graves

Author:Sarah Graves [Houses, The Book Of Old]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-02-20T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

I could tell from the stiffness of my dad’s flannel-shirted shoulders as he stomped off down the hall that he didn’t want to talk about what had just happened between him and Bella.

And when he didn’t want to talk, his jaw might as well have been wired shut. So I really had no choice but to begin torturing Bella about it, instead.

“Oh, yes, you are,” I told her in the kitchen about five minutes later. She’d used up most of those minutes insisting she wouldn’t discuss it, either.

But Bella never aired anything personal unless I dragged it out of her. And maybe I was wrong, but I suspected that right now she desperately wanted me to.

“You most certainly are going to talk,” I said. “To me, immediately. Because if you don’t, I’ve got big news for you: you’re fired.”

The minute the words were out of my mouth, I wanted to cram them back in again. But too late; Bella’s big, green eyes stared at me in horror.

“You wouldn’t,” she breathed.

“I said it, I meant it, I’m here to represent it,” I shot back rashly. Because that was the other thing about her; from somewhere or another she’d gotten the goofy idea that I was smart, determined, and fearless.

That I would stick to my guns. And if I didn’t have to fire her, I wanted her thinking so, or she would lose all respect for me. After that, the next time I asked her not to scrub out the insides of an old fireplace flue with toothpaste she would do it anyway, with minty-fresh but old-brick-destroying results.

And my father’s recent remarks about support beams notwithstanding, I strongly believed the chimneys held up my old house in several important places. The roof, for instance. And all four of the sides.

Bella hesitated, in case I might take the threat back. Meanwhile I calculated the size of the raise I’d be forced to offer if I did.

“Oh, all right,” she exhaled at last, bending to pick up pieces of broken plate.

Sorrowfully, she traced the gold rim of a shard with her callused fingertip. “We could glue it back together.” Her voice was uncharacteristically soft. “Or I could.”

Even if we found all the pieces, I doubted anyone could reassemble them. It was one of the set that had been in the house when Sam and I moved in here, bone china with a scalloped edge and a delicate, hand-painted floral design.

“No. Never mind, just put them in the trash, all right?” I said. “It doesn’t matter. Because you know what, Bella?”

Her shoulders sagged. Cautiously, I stepped nearer, slipped a tentative arm around her waist.

To my surprise, she didn’t resist. “Things break,” I told her simply. “You know, sometimes, they just . . .”

Her fingers opened; the china shard dropped to the floor and broke into four more pieces, two slowly spinning clockwise and two of them counterclockwise.

We stared down at them in silence together as a door slammed angrily upstairs, followed by a curse.

And

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