Blackthorn Winter by Kathryn Reiss

Author:Kathryn Reiss [Reiss, Kathryn]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

MOM DIDN'T GO up to her sunroom that day but instead stayed downstairs, helping me with my algebra chapter. "I know I should be up there, either working on something new or at least selecting the paintings I want to put in the Springtime Art show," she told me. "But, frankly, I doubt I can work up there anymore, knowing that's where Liza was killed."

"No—she wasn't killed there, Mom," I corrected her. "Remember? The police report said she drowned. So the worst thing that happened to her here was getting bashed on the head, somehow."

Mom shivered. "Thinking about it makes me feel sick. Head bashing..." She curled up on the couch and started sketching the view from our front window. I sat at the kitchen table and put the algebra aside. Instead, I took out a fresh sheet of notebook paper and started writing a letter to my dad. I missed having him around, and I missed having e-mail for quick communication since he wasn't around. I wasn't used to writing letters.

Mom had phoned him already with the news of Liza's death and funeral, and he had called back while we were out. I listened to the message twice, just to hear his voice. Now I wrote him, updating him about the bloodstain in the sunroom. I was getting writer's cramp after about two minutes, but there was still something satisfying about writing to him. It made me feel connected—almost like an Internet link. My words would go from my thoughts through my hand, through the ink, onto the page ... and then fly across an ocean and a continent, right to my dad's pile of mail. He would sit at our table in the kitchen just as I was sitting here, and he would open my letter. It would be like an umbilical cord of words stretching between us. I told him about the bloodstain, and how scary it was not to know what was going on. I told him the police were sure it was Simon Jukes who had killed Liza, but I wasn't so sure. I told him about Henry Jukes, and his outburst at the wake. Then I tried to write little entertaining cameos about all the people we'd met, and so on—I guess at the back of my mind was the idea that maybe something I wrote would pique Dad's interest so he might decide to come join us here. P.S. What would it take to make you come see us here, Dad? I wrote at the end. We all miss you. I think even Mom misses you. She came here to paint and be a big artist, but now she can't bear to go up to her new studio with the bloodstained floor, and her artist friend is dead, and things are pretty grim. What I really want to know is: why can't you two just work things out?

I added the picture of the pirate ship that Edmund had drawn for Dad, and the letter in code from Ivy, and asked Mom if she had anything she wanted to send to Dad.

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