Read Online Pieces of My Sister's Life by Elizabeth Arnold - Free Book Online

periodic table or Latin verbs.
    She tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear and smiled sympathetically. “He’s planning to ask her when she graduates next spring, to keep her from going off to college. Don’t let him know I told you, because I swore I wouldn’t. It’s just you’ve been so swoony lately, and I didn’t want you getting your hopes up or anything.”
    “I don’t have hopes,” I said quickly. “I mean hell, if he’d marry Leslie, then I’m too good for him.” How could he marry Leslie? Was she his passion? Had he even thought about me? “Do you think she’ll say yes?”
    Eve swirled her hair into a twist, tied it in a graceful knot. “All I can tell you is I’ve seen the way they look in each other’s eyes. It’s like magic. My guess is by this time next year she’ll wear a ring on her finger and be knocked up.” Eve waggled her eyebrows and grinned. “Bet you anything they’ve already done it.”
    I could see a change in her expression then, an expectation that pissed me off. She wanted something from me, although I wasn’t sure what. “Well, they’re awful young,” I said, my voice tight. “I’d give them three years, tops.”
    At this, something like satisfaction flickered in Eve’s eyes, but I smiled and pretended I didn’t see it. Because there were times, in dealing with Eve, that you were happier if you didn’t look too far.
             
    I walked to LoraLee’s that night. The air was cold, but thick with the aroma of wood-burning stoves sharpened by the ocean salt, a layering known only to people who stayed on the island year-round. I stood by her fence and watched through her window as she lit a candle and gazed into the flame. I’d seen her pray before, how the calm would wash over her face, smoothing off the lines and curves so she looked kind of unfinished, like one of the raw carvings to which she’d given a profile but no character.
    LoraLee was never angry, never afraid. She owned less than anyone I’d ever known, but still she never seemed to long for the things she couldn’t have. Even after time smoothed the edges, when Justin was long married and long gone, it was a kind of peace I doubted I’d ever have.
    LoraLee stood to blow out the candle, then saw me. She opened her window, beaming. “Kerry, chile!”
    I walked to her entryway, not wanting to talk, just to stand there in the doorway breathing in the honey scent of beeswax and candle smoke.
    “Been days now since I seen you,” she said.
    I shrugged. “There’s been school and all.”
    LoraLee looked at me for a long while, then finally raised her thick eyebrows. “You needs some tea.”
    “I’m okay.”
    She nodded and went to her bookshelf, reached for a thick book with stiff pages. I tried to peer over her shoulder, but she harrumphed and waved me away. She ran her finger down a page, mouthing words, then closed the book and slipped it back onto the shelf. “I got jus’ the ress-pee. You bes’ wait here.”
    It was The Book. I’d always known she must have one, couldn’t hold the answers all in her head. And she’d left it there for me: serendipity. I stepped closer, listening to her kitchen sounds: cupboard doors, the swish snap of scissors. At the grind of the pestle she used for tea, I reached for it. The yellowed pages were filled with recipes, lists of strange herbs in sweeping calligraphic script. LoraLee went outside to pump water, and I flipped through the pages, delighting in their rich scent of dust and time. The crackle of the binding and scrollwork round the edges spoke of ancient truths, and I imagined the book was watching me read and conveying silent wisdom, filling me with a root of strength that reached down my back and through the floor.
    The pages held mysterious titles like “Binding,” “Polarity,” and “Protection.” Then a section on poisonous herbs that I flipped through quickly, like the paper itself might be leaching death. And then the section I