Breathe My Name by R.A. Nelson

Author:R.A. Nelson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2010-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

thirty-five

Aunt Dot wipes at her face. The skin between the bones of her fingers is slack, almost webbed. “It’s just that they don’t know, Wayne,” she says. “I don’t think they know.”

“What?” Wayne says.

“How bad it got. How sick Afton was. The things she did—before.”

“Oh,” Wayne says. “You mean like when she took the knife and—”

“Don’t say it.” Aunt Dot’s smoky voice rises almost to a squeal.

“All right,” Wayne says. “Let’s just say your mother—she got—different. Something broke inside her. I think the first time was right along after the third baby was born. Isn’t that right, Dot?”

Aunt Dot looks tired. “Yes. That’s the way I remember it. She was never the same after that.”

“Afton starting having times when she couldn’t tell real things from make-believe,” Wayne says. “It got to where it happened more and more often. The doctors—they told Larry she needed watching. But what was he going to do, working that kind of schedule? Besides, Larry Jelks didn’t trust doctors. Never has. Well, it turns out it was way worse than anybody knew. There is no telling what she was up to when nobody but you kids was around. Nobody really knows. But if it was me, I’d say—”

Aunt Dot stands. Her eyes are red, pleading. “All right. That’s enough about all that. This is supposed to be a happy time for Francine. So I’m going to do something special for her. Let me see, sugar.” She comes over and touches my arm still holding the Kleenex, and I can feel the dampness of the tissue. “Stay here. Just a minute.” And she goes off into a room in the back.

Wayne rises and goes into the kitchen. I look at Nix, and he shrugs his shoulders. It feels funny being in this strange room by ourselves. I desperately want to be out of this house, back on the road, but we still haven’t gotten what we came for. We can hear Wayne rummaging around in the refrigerator.

“Any of those deviled eggs left?”

Nix and I glance at each other, half afraid to speak. Then Aunt Dot comes back holding a scrap of paper.

“Francine, honey, this is old, but it’s likely he stayed in the same place. So you can send him the invitation.”

Daddy’s address.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.