What Big Teeth by Rose Szabo

Author:Rose Szabo [Szabo, Rose]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781789097818
Google: JBwnzgEACAAJ
Amazon: 0374314306
Publisher: Titan Books Limited
Published: 2021-07-05T23:00:00+00:00

SEVEN

I’d planned to spend the entire night reading the journal and learning its secrets. But when I got back to my room my fear had dissipated, and I was exhausted. I curled up on my side and fell asleep almost immediately, and when I woke up, someone was knocking at my door.

“Eleanor, darling?” Grandmere. I shoved the book and the cards under the covers, feeling a little guilty, and went to answer her. She was wearing a sky blue dress and a white sweater, and her soft gray hair was piled on top of her head like a little cloud. She looked like a grandmother from a catalog.

“You slept later than usual this morning,” she said. “I hope you don’t plan to miss breakfast.”

“I’m sorry. I had a hard time getting to sleep last night.”

Her face clouded. “I’m sorry to have bothered you,” she said. “I know you have your own life and your own plans, but I hoped to spend the morning with you.”

I gave her a smile. The ghost might not like her, but what did I care what Grandma Persephone thought, anyway? She could be wrong about things. She’d been wrong about me.

“I’ll be right down,” I said. “I just want to get dressed.”

I took my time picking out clothes and heading downstairs. I didn’t know why: I was excited to spend more time with Grandmere. But I kept returning to my mirror, arranging my hair, smoothing the collar of my blouse, wondering if I looked perfect, too. And I kept waiting, also, to see if anything would appear in the mirror. But there was nothing but my own worried face.

Before I left, I tucked the journal and the tarot cards into the drawer of my nightstand. No sense leaving them lying around, I thought, although I wasn’t sure exactly who I was hiding them from, or why.

“I’d like us to have a dinner party,” Grandmere said, when we were eating breakfast with Mother and Luma. Father and Rhys had retreated into the woods to check on Grandpa Miklos, who had not been back to the house since the night before. And Luma and Mother were mostly silent. Mother picked at her food in between dabbing at her face with a damp handkerchief, and Luma worked at the same piece of bacon fat indefinitely, staring moodily out the window.

“A dinner party?” Mother asked.

“Just a small one,” Grandmere said. “I want to invite the woman who is the most important in the village and her husband. Who is that? And perhaps your Arthur?”

I blushed at the “your Arthur.” “I think it’s Mrs. Hannafin,” I said. “She runs the post office. Her husband owns the general store.”

“Is there no mayor? No elders?”

“It’s too small for that,” I said. “Mrs. Hannafin is the only person I’ve seen tell anyone else what to do. Other than Grandma Persephone.”

Grandmere looked sad.

“I know I should not speak ill of someone who has passed,” she said. “But it troubles me so, the way she treated you.

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