Read Online Dangerous Neighbors by Beth Kephart - Free Book Online Page B

you?”
    “See me?”
    “Out and about with your baker’s boy?”
    “I’m never afraid, Katherine, except when you want me to be.” Anna laughed but Katherine didn’t. She walked to her own bed, sat down on the stale sheets, didn’t trust herspine to hold her. “If only you’d come,” Anna said appeasingly. “There was a kite, an orange one, above the river. And there were turtles, Katherine. A herd of them. We went all the way to the boathouses, hunting for your flowers.”
    “Isn’t that nice?” Katherine said again, dully.
    “They’re painted so pretty.”
    “The flowers?”
    “No,” Anna said. “The boathouses. And the scullers and coxswains and crews were out, and the shade beneath the pines was blue. Blue, Katherine. I was wishing you could have seen it. I swear that I was.”
    She sounded defensive and small, but Katherine wasn’t in the mood to forgive her. Anna had never told the truth to Pa. She had not stayed home when Katherine, her protector, her secret keeper, was ill.
    “Don’t say what you don’t mean.”
    “We went to get you
flowers.”
Anna’s cheeks were flushed now, her eyes sharply accusing. “But Bennett found the bird. The bird was better.”
    “Bennett
found it.”
    “It seemed lost.”
    “I see.”
    “It fit nicely in the hatbox.”
    “Yes?”
    “You’re being horrid, Katherine. I brought you a gift.”
    “Hardly,” Katherine said. “Seems I gave you one.”
    “Listen to you.” Anna turned, collected the hatbox, stood.
    “Where are you going?”
    “I’m not amusing you. That’s clear. It’s rather tedious, actually, to be here with you.”
    “You just arrived.”
    “And now I’m going.”
    “Anna?” It was Pa, calling up from the bottom of the stairs.
    “Yes, Pa?”
    “Katherine okay?”
    “She’s resting, Pa.” Anna shot Katherine a look. “I was just going out to get some air.”
    She threw a little curtsy. She spun on her heels. She was gone. It wasn’t until so much later that night that Anna came to bed—she slipped into their room, threw open the window, stood by the moon. It was as if she was waiting for Katherine to talk, giving them both a second chance. But Katherine wouldn’t turn. She wouldn’t look her sister in the eyes. A while later, Anna was gone—across the floor, out the door, and down the wide-planked steps. Into the darkness with Bennett.
    “What a
stupid
thing to do,” Katherine accused Anna, the next morning, near dawn. She’d been lying there in their room through the whole night alone, her fever gone, her mind restless. She’d been willing herself to stay where shewas, to not go running after her sister again; to let Anna take the consequences, let Anna be damned. Katherine had lain in bed, her heart loud and ugly in her chest, her thoughts teetering between revenge and regret, and for the longest while there were only the acrobatics of a squirrel up on the roof, and then the early morning finch set in. The skies were scored with lemon and pink before the latch slid back on the wide front door, and the footfalls rose, and Anna arrived, breathless, her boots in her hands.
    “Don’t call me stupid.”
    “You are. Look at you. Like a cat in the night.”
    “For God’s sake, Katherine,” Anna said. “Be civilized.” Anna raised her hand to her ruined hair and primped it ineffectually. She ran her fingers down the buttons of her thin overcoat, fondly, absentmindedly, the trace of a smile still caught on her face, not a single ounce of remorse.
    “And are
you
civilized? Sneaking out to a river by day, to a park at night, to wherever you’ve just come from—with a baker’s boy, Anna?
Alone?
You could be dead. Who’d know where to find you?” Katherine heard her voice rising, and she didn’t care. She knew she was in danger of blaring her sister’s affair to the world, and frankly, why shouldn’t she? Anna was treating Katherine as if she were their elder. Treating her as if she couldn’t be trusted.