Read Online Ship of Dolls by Shirley Parenteau - Free Book Online

warning. Too late. The words were out. And she wasn’t sorry. She’d been sorry enough.
    With her eyes too bright, Grandma walked over to the cookstove. “We are happy to have you with us, Electra, but you will not grow up to be as heedless as your mother. Not if I have anything to say about it, and I believe I do.”
    She shoved the lid lifter under the heavy stove lid and pulled it to one side. “To lead me to believe that sewing the doll’s dress was an honor was a lie of omission. To my mind, that is no better than a lie spoken.” Flames leaped from the wood burning in the open firebox. Grandma’s voice snapped like the sparks. “Bring that dress over here.”

S hock washed the feeling from Lexie’s face and arms to somewhere deep inside. All the resistance left her. Grandma couldn’t . . . She
couldn’t
mean to burn Emily Grace’s dress. “But . . . it’s almost done.”
    Sounding far away, Grandpa protested. “Sophie?”
    Lexie hesitated, hoping Grandpa would somehow make things right.
    Grandma raised the cast-iron lid higher. The fire burning below made a wavering glow on the surface. “A hard lesson is a lesson well learned.”
    Lexie held up the dress, as if it could change Grandma’s mind. “See . . .? The stitches barely show.”
    “Drop it in here.”
    Lexie’s fingers clenched over the pretty flower-​sprigged dress with its blue-​trimmed collar and matching sash. She thought of all the tiny stitches she had hand-​sewn into it. Miss Tompkins would be impressed.
    But Miss Tompkins was never going to see it.
    “Electra.”
    “I was going to borrow Emily Grace to try the dress on her. Miss Tompkins said I could.”
    Without seeming to move her lips, Grandma asked, “Did you hear what I said?”
    Angry tears burned down Lexie’s cheeks. She twisted around to look up at Grandpa but saw no rescue, though his face looked troubled.
    Pride rushed new heat through Lexie’s chilled body. She could be as strong as Grandma. She
was
as strong. But until she got to San Francisco, she had to do as Grandma and Grandpa told her. Even when she knew they were wrong. Lurching to her feet, she held the dress before her and tried to see it as nothing but firewood.
    Grief could wait. Her entire body felt stiff with the feelings she locked inside as she crossed the kitchen to the cookstove. She didn’t hesitate. She didn’t dare. Her courage might not last.
    She brought the dress over the open stove, held it briefly — in case Grandma had an unlikely change of heart — then opened her fingers and let it fall.
    For a moment, the flower-​sprigged cotton lay on the burning wood. Lexie nearly reached in to snatch it back. The cloth caught fire. Flames leaped. Grandma wasn’t finished. “Bring the pattern.”
    “Surely she’s done enough,” Grandpa said.
    Both Lexie and Grandma paid him no mind. Anger rode over anguish within Lexie, driving her to the sewing cabinet. She pulled open one of the small drawers and jerked the folded paper pattern pieces from under the scissors.
    For a moment, she thought of the care she had taken in measuring Emily Grace. But that reminded her of the closeness she had briefly shared with her grandparents, and there was no room in her heart for closeness. She crumpled the paper pattern, carried it to the stove, and dropped it onto the burning cloth.
    Grandma shoved the cast-​iron lid in place. “Go on to bed. Think about the importance of honesty.”
    Lexie ran up the stairs, slammed her door behind her, and hurled herself onto the bed, sobbing into Annie’s soft cloth body for the loss of the dress she had worked so hard to make. Even deeper sobs tore at her for the loss of the family closeness she had felt so briefly. “I should have told. Annie, I ruined everything!”
    She wouldn’t stay here. She would go to Mama. She would walk all the way to California. One step in front of the other for long enough would carry her anywhere.
    Maybe I’ll go to Japan with Emily