Principles of Emotion by Sara Read

Author:Sara Read
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Graydon House Books
Published: 2023-11-13T18:49:11+00:00

15

I had never noticed how truly enormous Lila’s house was until we came home. You could have fit the cabin into the foyer with ease. It would have fit twice over in the garage. I appreciated the electricity and indoor plumbing and took a long, hot shower to prove it. But all the extra space oppressed me. I realized it wasn’t just for the sake of privacy that I occupied the third floor. The rooms were smaller. Built to be lived in, not to impress. The maid’s quarters were too cramped, and everything else too gaping. The third floor was the Goldilocks zone of the house.

The third floor was still mine alone, though, because Isaac refused to sleep anywhere there wasn’t an exit. And granted, it was hard for him to manage those stairs on crutches. He liked the maid’s bedroom. It was five feet from the side door and had a window to the garden with only a short drop to the ground.

Up in my little bedroom, I emptied my bag. My clothes smelled smoky and shed a few blades of grass and flecks of bark onto the floor. In the pocket of my sweatshirt I felt something heavy.

The heart. I tested it, gently tried to bend it, but it didn’t give. And it was a little bit sharp at the lower point. A heart that had gone through the fire and come out strong.

High up in the top of Lila’s house, I felt like I was standing at the edge of a precipice, having just pulled myself up over the rim and finally able to see the huge distance I had climbed.

I had the window open, and the early fall air reminded me, as it always did, of the bottom of that gorge. The worst moments of my life.

My first year of college, my father pulled in some favors and tucked me away with room and board in the home of a member of the engineering faculty. I was only fourteen years old, after all. Not exactly ready for dorm life.

They were people who had never had kids. The Magnusons. I remember them. He was awkward and seemed to avoid me, but she was kind.

What was her first name? I couldn’t remember. I only ever called her Mrs. Magnuson. She had hair so blond it was almost white. She knocked on the door of my room after I’d been at their house a few days.

“What do you like to eat, Meg?” she asked, opening the door.

I sat on the bed with a book in my lap. So startled I could hardly speak. She walked in and sat on the end of the bed.

“Do you need help unpacking?” She looked around the room. “Look at all your books. You’re quite the collector.”

“It’s okay. I can do it.”

“I haven’t really asked what you like—for dinner.”

I shrugged and kept my eyes on my book. Outside the window, a maple was just beginning to turn from green to yellow. The afternoon light angled low through the branches.

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.