Read Online The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty - Free Book Online Page B

didn’t know, but that she’d just lost her first tooth. Both the man and the woman laughed as if Cora had said something terribly funny, as if she were one of the children singing the Jesus song, trying hard to be cute. She gave them a hard look, but they continued to smile. The man looked at the woman. The woman nodded.
    “We’d like you to come live with us,” the man said. “We’d like you to be our little girl.”
    “We have a room all set up. Your room.” The woman smiled, showing overgrown front teeth. “With a window, and a bed. And a little dresser.”
    Cora looked at them, revealing nothing. They couldn’t be her parents. They didn’t look anything like her. And they’d said nothing about a pony. Also, this was a strange place, the main street of the town dry and dusty. And windy. On the walk from the station, the wind had nearly knocked her down.
    Then the agent’s hands were on her shoulders. “She’s shy. And tired, no doubt. They’ve been on the train for days.”
    “Hungry, I imagine,” the woman said. She seemed distressed about this.
    The agent, still behind Cora, gave her a push forward. “Go on now,” she said, with no question in her voice. “And be grateful, why don’t you. It seems to me you’re a lucky little girl.”

FIVE
     
    At a blow of the whistle, she blinked awake, her hat crooked on her head. Louise was not in her seat. She turned, looking around the car. The fat baby across the aisle, silent but awake in its mother’s lap, looked back at her with a stern expression. Many seats were empty. She fixed her hat and rubbed her neck. No need for alarm. Louise might just be using the bathroom. She’d been considerate, slipping into the aisle without waking Cora. She would likely be back any minute.
    The train rolled past a field of corn, the stalks summer high, the golden tips peeking out of the green, straining toward the sun. Cora searched her seat for her book and frowned when she saw it on the floor. She wouldn’t be able to reach for it, not in her corset. She tried to lift the book between her shoes, but her soles were too stiff, and she only managed to scoot it under Louise’s seat. She looked over at Louise’s empty seat. The Schopenhauer book lay open-faced on top of the magazines. Cora turned, glancing up and down the aisle. Seeing nosign of Louise, she leaned forward as far as she could and grabbed the Schopenhauer. She checked the aisle again, then skimmed the pages until she found something underlined in the girl’s blue-inked pen.
It would be better if there were nothing. Since there is more pain than pleasure on earth, every satisfaction is only transitory, creating new desires and new distresses, and the agony of the devoured animal is always far greater than the pleasure of the devourer.
     
    There were blue-ink doodles along the margins. Three-dimensional arrows. Staring eyes. Spiraling vines with leaves. Another passage had stars around it.
We will gradually become indifferent to what goes on in the minds of other people when we acquire a knowledge of the superficial nature of their thoughts, the narrowness of their views and of the number of their errors. Whoever attaches a lot of value to the opinions of others pays them too much honor.
     
    Frowning, Cora closed the book and put it back as she’d found it, on top of the magazines.
    As it was just after noon, the dining cars were busy, with waiters holding trays high over their heads and sliding fast past each other in the aisles. Nearly every booth was full. But Louise, wearing no hat, was easy to spot. She was facing Cora, her crossed legs turned toward the aisle, a heeled shoe dangling off of one foot. The man who had offered to lower their window sat beside her, smoking a cigar. An electric fan sat on a corner of the table, blowing smoke over his shoulder out the window. The man’s free arm rested on the back of their seat, close to Louise’s shoulder.
    A black man in a spotless white coat