Read Online Bones & All by Camille Deangelis - Free Book Online

“It doesn’t bother you, does it?” she asked.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œThe clock. My niece says it ticks so loudly she can’t hear herself think.” She put her hand on her hip as she transferred the hash browns and bacon to a spare plate and started on the eggs. “I find it reassuring, myself. After all, the passage of time is the only thing we can be sure of in this world.” Mrs. Harmon dropped two slices of bread in the toaster, took the eggs off the stove, and arranged our plates.
    It was the best breakfast I’d ever tasted. You can’t feel entirely hopeless with a warm meal in your belly—a warm, honest meal—and being with Mrs. Harmon was even better. She made me forget, for a little while at least, that I didn’t have a place to go home to anymore. Mrs. Harmon smiled at me as she sipped her orange juice, and it hit me then: She trusted me.
    I took our plates to the sink and washed them along with the frying pan, and with a murmur of thanks she laid herself down on the sofa and pulled the red and blue afghan over her. The white cat hopped up and settled itself on her tummy. “Ah, Puss,” she said, and rubbed him behind the ears.
    I sat in the armchair by the door and noticed on the table beside it a white wicker basket brimming with balls of yarn in sherbet colors, raspberry and peach and baby blue. “Do you knit?” Mrs. Harmon asked, and I shook my head. “I have bags and bags of wool, but I’ll never be able to use it all. I can’t do much needlework these days—my arthritis prevents it.”
    â€œMaybe you could teach me. I mean, if it wouldn’t hurt your hands too much.” I’d never thought of learning how to knit before, but now out of nowhere I wanted to very much. I wanted to knit myself a sweater I could hide inside.
    â€œI’d love to, dear. I’ll just have a little rest first.” In my mind I was already knitting a hood like the Grim Reaper’s. I would wear it up so no one could see my face.
    â€œYou look tired yourself, Maren. Why don’t you take a nap in the spare room?” Every time I hear the words “spare room” I think of Narnia. Daughter of Eve from the far land of Spare Oom, where eternal summer reigns around the bright city of War Drobe  …
    â€œNo one has come to stay with me for ages,” Mrs. Harmon was saying. “I think spare rooms ought to be used as much as possible, don’t you? It’s the first door on the right past the kitchen. Then when you wake up, we’ll have tea and cake. I baked a carrot cake yesterday. And I’ll teach you how to knit, and when you go home I’ll give you a bag of yarn to take with you. Won’t that be nice?”
    After a night in an abandoned Cadillac, it sounded like a dream.
    I watched her eyelids grow heavy. “Have a nice rest, Maren.”
    â€œYou too, Mrs. Harmon.”
    Then she startled herself awake with a thought. “Oh! Perhaps you should call your mother?”
    I shook my head. “She’s not expecting me back until later.” I didn’t like lying to her, but maybe it wasn’t as much of a lie if you wished it were true.
    â€œAh. Good.” Mrs. Harmon closed her eyes, and I went down the hall and opened the door on the right. It was the fanciest bed I’d ever seen, with a dark mahogany headboard carved with laughing cherubs—too old, too strange, and much too marvelous for an ordinary house like this—and a pinwheel quilt in yellow and blue. A big chest of drawers with a mirror on top stood at the far wall, and there was a chair in the corner with a red velvet cushion. It was the nicest Spare Oom there ever was.
    On the night table I found an antique sculpture, a sphinx cast in bronze with wings outspread. I picked it up—it was much heavier than I expected, and covered in soft emerald-green felt on the bottom—and when I read the inscription I