Read Online Hatteras Girl (Heart of Carolina Book #3) by Alice J. Wisler - Free Book Online

the ocean side of the town. From the front yard, we’d hear Irvy playing and singing at the piano. Quietly, we’d slip inside the front door, trying not to rattle the doorknob that had a tendency to sound like BBs rolling inside a tin can. Sometimes a student would be seated on the bench beside Irvy; sometimes Irvy sat alone with new sheet music. She frequented the music shop in Manteo and particularly liked to buy selections from movie soundtracks. Casablanca and The King and I were two of her favorites.
    “Hair done at Sheerly’s,” Irvy tells me as a pool of saliva runs down her chin.
    I nod. I want to wipe her chin, but I don’t have a tissue or anything with me.
    “Sheerly does my hair.” Talking is labor for her.
    My eyes focus on a bruise on her wrist, purple lined with avocado green. It looks like a butterfly, one wing shorter than the other.
    Minnie is back now, taking her seat.
    I let my hands relax.
    “Take me to Sheerly’s,” Irvy demands.
    “She’s coming here, Mama.” Minnie finds a tissue in her purse— she keeps a pack in there for these occasions—and gently clears away the wetness from her mother’s face. “She doesn’t want you to travel. She’ll fix your hair here.”
    A long pause, and I’m aware of movement around me. A silverhaired woman in a cotton duster is looking under my chair for her glasses. “I lost them, Annabelle.” Her thin, spotty face is inches from mine. She lets out a breath, and my senses are saturated with antiseptic mouthwash. “Annabelle, do you see them?”
    I have been called many things in my life but never by this name. Bending down, I glance under my chair. “Nope.”
    The woman looks at Minnie and then gestures toward Irvy. “Has anyone seen my glasses?”
    An attendant in medical-green scrubs searches with her. “Are you sure, Miss Williams, that you were by the piano when you misplaced them?” he asks as his hands slide over the bench.
    I feel like I do when Zane is looking for his stuffed squirrel—wanting to hurry and find the critter so I can be released from the frustration of its being lost.
    The attendant ushers Miss Williams away from us, telling her that the missing glasses might be in her room.
    “I want to get out of here.” Irvy’s right arm starts to sway with short, jerky movements.
    Minnie uses her soothing voice. With fingers stroking her mother’s arm, she says, “You like it here, Mama. You like the liver and onions.”
    “Yes, I do.”
    “Then you need to stay.”
    Irvy’s eyes shut, she groans, and then, “Are they for lunch today?”
    “Yes, liver and onions.”
    Her mouth continues to move, more saliva along her chin.
    Minnie wipes it with the tissue.
    Irvy asks, “With banana puddin’?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “Yella banana puddin’. ”
    “Yes.”
    After a measurable pause, Irvy says, “Not the brown kind.”
    “You mean applesauce.”
    “No, I want puddin’!”
    “Yes, yes, I know.”
    She twists in her wheelchair. “I . . . I . . . I . . .” Her fluffy slippers have come off her feet.
    “There, now,” says Minnie.
    Soon Minnie’s mom is asleep, her wrinkled mouth open like a banana slice.
    The attendant named Dicey covers Irvy’s limbs with a faded pink quilt and then fits Irvy’s feet back into her slippers and snuggles them into the constraints of the wheelchair’s footholds.
    Minnie tells Dicey that she guesses she won’t be feeding Mama today. Once, she woke her mother from a nap, and Irvy was so disoriented that Minnie vowed never to do that again. Dicey smiles and says, “We’ll take good care of Miss Irvy. Don’t you worry your head, now.”
    When Minnie and I open the glass door to exit the home, the sunshine greets us with a blast of stifling heat. Normally, I’d feel bothered by the sudden humidity, especially after being in a building that was cool—but not now. I want to run, just to prove that I am agile enough to be free from the home’s gray walls and brown doors, a place