Read Online Behind the Curtain by Peter Abrahams - Free Book Online

one.”
    “I don’t get it,” Ingrid said.
    Mom smiled. She picked up St. Joseph and gave him a close look. “Some people believe if you bury St. Joseph upside down in your yard, the house sells quicker.”
    Wow. People were amazing. “Don’t give one to the Goldbergs,” Ingrid said, the Goldbergs being a new listing of Mom’s in Lower Falls.
    Mom laughed, tousled Ingrid’s hair. “That’s what you’re having for breakfast?” she said. “Different forms of sugar?”
    Ingrid took another St. Joseph out of the box. “What if you buried him right side up?”
    Mom thought for a moment. “I guess your house would never sell.”
    “Can I have one?” Ingrid said.
    “Why?”
    “I don’t know. Just to have.”
    Mom shrugged. “Sure. And Nigel could use a walk.”
    Nigel, dozing by his food bowl in the corner, didn’t look like exercise was on his mind.
    “He’s sleeping,” Ingrid said. But the words were hardly out of her mouth before Nigel suddenly lurched to his feet, eyes opening in slow motion.
    “And it’s miserable out there,” Ingrid said.
    “This is New England,” Mom said.
     
    “That makes you a New England dog,” Ingrid said through gritted teeth, dragging Nigel, who’d changed his mind about the whole thing the moment he’d stepped outside, across the backyard. He didn’t start self-propelling until they entered thetown woods, acres and acres that stretched all the way to the river.
    Ingrid let him off the leash. Twenty or thirty yards along the path, rain dripping down off bare branches overhead, Nigel paused and sniffed the air. After that he wanted to trot around in circles.
    “Whatever you’re doing, make it quick,” Ingrid said.
    He kept circling. Just ahead and slightly off the path stood a thick oak with a kind of double trunk bearing the remains of the tree house that Ty and Ingrid had built—and Dad had rebuilt more safely—years ago. Nigel trotted over and rubbed his head against the bark.
    “Any idea how you look right now?” Ingrid said.
    He kept doing it, only now there was some drool.
    “Evidently not.”
    She moved closer to the tree. When had she last been up there? Ingrid couldn’t remember. The tree house had somehow just slipped away.
    The footholds Dad had nailed into the trunk were still in place. Ingrid ran her hand over one. Just a scrap piece of pine or something, but it had a special feel that brought her back. The next thing she knew, she was climbing up the tree.
    The entrance to the tree house was a round hole in the floor, twenty feet up. Ingrid pulled herself through. Inside was a small square room, moss growing on one of the walls, a pile of leaves in one corner, everything damp. But the two stools, red for Ingrid, blue for Ty, were still there, and so was the sign Ty had painted: THE TREEHOUS . OWNR TY . ASISTENT INGRID . They’d played a game called Dark Forest Spies, consisting mostly of hiding out from imaginary intruders, talking in whispers, and dropping Ping-Pong balls that were actually grenades over the side when things got menacing. Their deadliest enemy was the Meany Cat. When Ty thought he heard it coming, he’d tell Ingrid to hide behind the stools and close her eyes. “I’ll protect you,” he’d say. After that, she’d hear him making little explosion sounds, and soon the coast would be clear.
    Ingrid gazed out the window. Outside was a high-up world she’d forgotten. A gray squirrel stood motionless on a nearby branch, an acorn in its mouth. White mushrooms grew from a hole in a tree trunk. A brown oak leaf drifted by.
    Ingrid turned to go, spotted something half hidden in the leaf pile. Could it be? Yes. A Ping-Pong ball. She reached for it and, as she did, feltsomething else under the leaves.
    Ingrid brushed the leaves away, picked it up—a little plastic bottle, empty. It was the kind vitamins might come in, although the label said nothing about vitamins, at least nothing she could understand. The writing was all in