Quantum Leap 1: Carny Knowledge by Ashley McConnell

Author:Ashley McConnell [McConnell, Ashley]
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

This time he made it past the kitchen and into the front parlor. He had come around to the back to begin with, and Aline had greeted him at the

door. She seemed to be glad to see him, and welcomed him inside without question, leading him immediately to the room in the front of the house.

The parlor window, draped in intricate, heavy knotted-lace curtains, looked over the front porch and lawn. The same lace was draped over the backs and arms of the overstuffed chairs as antimacassars. The room smelled faintly of lemon oil and disuse, everything dusted, everything perfect, a House Beautiful kind of room from 1957 or perhaps 1857, if one didn’t look too closely. It was a very Victorian kind of parlor; the little tables beside the chairs were crammed with pictures of people, adults standing stiffly staring into the camera, children dressed in sailor suits and pinafores, eyes full of tears from being made to pose and hold still for the camera so long.

The walls too were covered with pictures, group photographs and single shots, graduation pictures and picnics. He recognized one of Aline in a mortarboard from the store of high school yearbooks, and, shockingly, one of Bob Watkins, too.

But the vast majority of the pictures were of jugglers, clowns, rides from the amusement park. There was one of Dusty from years ago, holding the reins of one of his ponies, with a little boy wearing a cowboy hat and a grim expression, holding onto the saddle horn for dear life. There was another picture of Bob Watkins, a sheepish grin on his face, standing beside Jesse and a much older man who must have been Karl Schaeber, next to the sign by the amusement park entrance.

It made him wonder just what the relationship was supposed to be between Bob Watkins and Aline Schaeber, and he looked at her in a new light. She was the same age, according to Al, and the class pictures showed they had started school together. The brush with polio, though not as debilitating as the disease could easily have been, evidently had caused Bob to lose a year. Aline had forged on, and a gap was created between them.

Other people in Jasmine, knowing them both, didn’t perceive it in the same way; Vera accepted him, if not as an equal at least as decent company. Dusty took it for granted that he was on a first-name basis with her. But when Aline invited him in, she took him to the front parlor to talk instead of the more informal kitchen. There were unwritten rules about meeting young ladies in parlors. Perhaps Bob had once had an expectation that the two of them would be closer than Aline wanted them to be? She seemed to want to maintain a distance between them.

She was attractive, of course. She had dark hair and violet eyes and a neat slim figure, and Al would probably be crooning to himself—where was Al, anyway? It wasn’t like him to stay away this long.

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