Read Online Angel Sister by Ann H. Gabhart - Free Book Online Page A

left on the cabinet for her and sleeping on the floor one night, and the next, bedding down out in the woods in a shelter she made by chopping down cedars and piling them up for walls.
    Some people said Graham didn’t live in the house because he was afraid of Fern, but Kate thought it was more that he’d turned the house into a shrine of sorts to his parents. He liked taking Kate and Tori over to the house to show them his mother’s hats. There were shelves of them. Graham would always talk about how beautiful and fashionable his mother had been as he brushed the dust off the hats for the girls to try on.
    Kate asked him once why he didn’t give the hats away. Everybody else Kate knew packed up the clothes of any family member who died and sent the box off to the orphans’ or the old folks’ home. But Graham had looked genuinely shocked at the idea of giving away his mother’s hats. “I couldn’t do that. She might need them,” he said.
    At the time, Kate had been too afraid to ask him what he meant by that. She already got the heebie-jeebies sometimes when she was in the parlor where Lillie Lindell’s portrait hung. She was sure the woman’s eyes were staring at her no matter where she moved in the room. Kate didn’t like putting on the dead woman’s hats either, but sometimes she did it to keep from hurting Graham’s feelings. She never let the hats sit on her head more than a couple of seconds, as if they might still be carrying some trace of the influenza that had carried their owner away from the living world.
    This morning, when Kate and Tori finally pushed through the cedar thickets and trees and came out on the pond bank, the water looked cool and inviting. Kate wasn’t a bit surprised to see Graham and his long-eared hound, Poe, sitting on the east bank of the pond in the shade. As she and Tori walked around the pond toward him, frogs hopped out across the green moss clinging to the edges of the bank and plopped into the water.
    Graham wasn’t fishing, but his pole was on the bank beside him. “Done drowned all my worms,” he told them. “We got here before sunrise and caught me and Poe a mess for dinner, so the rest of them out there are yours, Victoria, if you can get them to bite.” Graham looked up at the sky. “The sun’s already getting high in the sky.”
    “I know.” Tori made a face as she dug a worm out of her can of dirt and scooted it on her hook. “Kate had to go to the store.” She held the can out toward Kate.
    Kate waved it away and set her cane pole down. “You can catch whatever’s left, Tori. I’ll go hunt for raspberries.” She held up her berry bucket. “Mama’s making jam.”
    “Yum,” Graham said as he stood up. “I’ll tell you where some good ones are if you promise to bring me a jar. Of course there might be snakes.” Poe raised his head up off his paws and gave his owner a sad-eyed look to see if they really were leaving such a good resting place.
    “I’m not afraid of snakes.”
    “I wasn’t either till one bit me some time back. My leg swelled up big as a fence post. Probably would’ve died if I hadn’t known some cures. Still goes dead on me from time to time if I don’t drink my adder’s-tongue potion.” Graham stomped his right foot.
    Kate never knew whether to believe Graham or not. He had studied medicine. Had planned to be a doctor like his father before the influenza epidemic interrupted his plans. He did come up with special potions from roots. Not to give to other people, but sometimes when somebody in Rosey Corner had a sick animal, they’d come after Graham.
    Folks said he should hang out a shingle as an animal doctor, but he didn’t. He wouldn’t even take any money for helping the animals. That way the farmers couldn’t get mad at him if the potions killed their livestock instead of helping them, he said. He did sometimes take a jar of beans or slab of bacon. He had to keep food on the table for Fern and Poe.
    Graham wasn’t