Read Online All the Way Home by Wendy Corsi Staub - Free Book Online

trying not to be spooked by the path of darkness behind her.
    When she’s back in bed beside Lou, with the pillows once again strategically placed and her bladder empty and her stomach settled, she can’t fall asleep, even though she was yawning only minutes ago.
    For some reason, she keeps thinking about those stupid crackers.
    Keeps wondering why, if she really did eat them, she hadn’t just finished them, instead of leaving two measly crackers and some crumbs in the bottom of the bag. Lord knows, she’s eaten everything else in sight lately.
    Okay, if you didn’t eat them , she asks herself reluctantly, then who did?

 
    C HAPTER F OUR
    “W hat are you doing?”
    Rory jumps at the sound of a voice behind her and turns to see her mother standing in the doorway of the kitchen. Her hair is disheveled and she’s wearing a faded floral sundress Rory remembers from her childhood, which means it must be at least ten years old, probably more. Her feet are clad in heavy burgundy pumps and she’s clutching a black faux leather handbag, neither of which go with the summer dress. Despite the June heat, there’s a white sweater over her shoulders, the long sleeves hanging empty and the top button fastened at her throat.
    “Good morning, Mom. Are you going out?” Like that? But she doesn’t say the last part. She’s not a teenaged girl anymore, worried about what her friends will think of her crazy mother in her crazy get-up. She has her own life, far from here, and she couldn’t care less if people talk about Maura.
    “I just came back from church.”
    “Oh, right.” Rory hadn’t realized she was gone. But she should have known. Maura never misses daily mass. “Can I make you something for breakfast? There are bagels and lox and—”
    “What are you doing, Rory?”
    Mom is staring at the open paint can on the newspaper-lined linoleum; at the dripping white-coated brush in Rory’s hand.
    “I’m painting the woodwork,” she says in a small voice, feeling suddenly like a little girl.
    She braces herself for her mother’s reaction.
    There’s no raised voice. No how dare you?
    Her mother’s eyes move to the frame around the window over the sink. There’s a vivid line between the bright new white paint and the dingy old part.
    “Good” is all Maura says, with a shrug.
    She moves to the stove, sets the beige teakettle on the burner, and lights the flame.
    Rory goes back to her painting, trying to think of something to say as her mother measures imported tea leaves from a metal canister. Mom has always been frugal, but she orders the tea directly from Dublin, her one indulgence.
    Finally, her mother seats herself at the kitchen table with her steaming mug—liberally sweetened as always, Rory notices as she counts the heaping spoonfuls of sugar Maura dumps in.
    “Where’s Molly?” she asks; there has been no sign of her sister yet this morning.
    “In bed, I guess.”
    “Does she always sleep this late?”
    “It’s only nine o’clock.”
    Rory, who has been known to sleep until noon if undisturbed, has no response to that.
    There’s silence in the kitchen for a while, broken only by the soft, swishing sounds of Rory’s paintbrush and her mother’s occasional sips and swallows.
    Finally, Rory says impulsively, “I know the stereo in the den is broken”—she had already tried that, earlier—“but is there a radio around someplace, Mom?”
    There’s a pause. “I don’t know.”
    “I just thought it would be nice to listen to music while I work. There used to be that transistor radio of Dad’s in the hall bathroom upstairs, but it’s gone.”
    “Mmm.”
    “And I know Molly has a boom box in her room, but I can’t ask her to borrow that. I know how teenaged girls are about loaning their stuff to . . .”
    She trails off. She was about to say, To a sister .
    Once again, Carleen’s ghost seems to have seeped into the room. Rory wonders if her mother is remembering, as she is, the battles she