Read Online Harvest of Changelings by Warren Rochelle - Free Book Online

Swiss army knife. “If your father was alive, he’d tell you I was never very good with children. Your mother would probably agree. Haze, they’d be right. Your grandmama and I are thinking this computer will make it easier for all of us. And no granddaughter of mine is going to start second grade without a computer. I know you had one in your kindergarten class and there will be one, maybe two or three, in your second grade class, but I want you to have one right here, right on your desk. I want you to be able to use one like you use a pencil. And it will keep you busy. Your father would have told you that neither of us ever had much time for children.”
    Hazel had just sat in the middle of the bed and nodded while her grandfather talked and opened boxes. Hazel could barely remember her father and mother. They had been killed in a car wreck when she was two, coming home on I-40 from a reception in Chapel Hill. Her father was the designated driver and had been as sober as a stone. The driver who tried to pass them wasn’t. Hazel’s memories of her parents were nebulous at best: the smell of cigarette smoke for her father and a white blur with a husky voice for her mother. The two people in the photograph on her grandmother’s dresser were strangers.
    Hazel’s grandmother gave her Alexander the day after the computer arrived. Anne Richards called Hazel down to her basement studio, which next to her bedroom, was Hazel’s favorite room in the
house. There was a kiln in one corner and racks and tables were piled with pots, bowls, pitchers, vases, and curious sculptures of animals and people’s heads. Sacks of clay and jars of glaze were neatly arranged on shelves facing the finished pottery. Hazel loved to come down early on weekend mornings and watch her grandmother work. The sun would slowly come in through tiny windows at the top of the walls and brush across the pottery, gilding the earthen hues with yellow and white fire.
    Her grandmother looked up from where she was sitting on the floor and shushed Hazel with her finger as she came down the stairs.
    â€œCome look in the box,” she whispered and pointed to a small, cardboard box right beside her. Hazel knelt down and peered inside. There was a tiny, grey ball of fur inside, a sleeping grey ball of fur; Hazel could see its back rise and fall.
    â€œThe vet said he’s a lilac-point—see, he’s just a bit darker on his face and his feet and his tail, sort of a blue-grey. Blue eyes. He’s just part Siamese, though—see those ghost stripes on his haunches and his tail and how big his paws are? Some alley cat tainted his royal blood. But the vet said a mix would probably have a better personality than a purebred. This is my congratulations-on-skipping-first-grade present and my not-so-good-with-children present. I sometimes wonder how we managed to raise your father,” her grandmother said absently. She carefully scooped up the yawning fur ball and put the kitten in Hazel’s hands.
    â€œBut never mind that. Your grandfather wanted me to get a puppy, but I like cats better. They don’t require as much time or attention as a dog. There was a brown kitten that I thought might match your hair, but there was something about this one. I think his eyes will match yours—see how blue they are?”
    At five-going-on-six, Hazel didn’t quite understand her grandparents’ concerns with their parenting skills. They were her parents. At eight-almost-nine, when Hazel was in the fourth grade, and her grandfather brought home a new computer for her and gave the same speech again, Hazel paid no attention. Background noise, just things they seemed to like to say, she thought as her grandfather unpacked the new computer and explained why he wanted her to have it and that he and her grandmother hoped she would be self sufficient, as her father had been, and not need them so much. Hazel had already learned