Read Online The Ice Cradle by Mary Ann Winkowski, Maureen Foley - Free Book Online Page B

now the blinding beams of light from the other side were filling the room, and the door to the other side was right there, superimposed on the doorway to the hall. It was less than five feet away from us, just waiting for Vivi to walk through it.
    “Look, honey,” I said. “Everyone you love is right through that door. Look! Look at the light! Go ahead! Maybe you’ll see your mommy. Or your daddy.”
    She wanted to look, I could tell, but she refused to turn her head. I could see how hard she was working to control her own curiosity and longing. But she didn’t like me. She had liked me last night, but now she didn’t, and she wasn’t going to give me the satisfaction of doing anything I asked her to do. Even at the cost of her own happiness.
    “Sweetie,” I said. “I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings. I really and truly am. I want you to be happy. I don’t want you to be lonesome anymore.”
    “Liar!” she said. “You want me to go away.”
    I sighed. It was true. If I could have picked her up bodily, carried her over to the door of white light, and tossed her through it, I would have. But you can’t pick up a ghost.
    “How about we just look?” I suggested. “You don’t have to go through if you don’t want to, but we could just walk over to that door and have a little peek. See who we see.” I winked, hoping my enthusiasm would be infectious.
    It wasn’t.
    Fairly quivering with the effort required to resist my pleas, she shook her head angrily and disappeared. I had no choice but to close the shining door.

    I don’t know what woke me up.
    I had been having a crazy dream about popping popcorn in my old dorm room. I had poured in too many kernels, and I was watching with horror as the volume of popped corn grew and grew, lifting the lid right off my old Revere Ware pan. Andthen there was all this noise in the hall; people were shouting, and people outside in the courtyard were yelling, and it was all because I’d been popping the corn on an illegal hot plate. I knew I was going to get busted.
    There was the sound of shattering glass, and I opened my eyes.
    The room was dark, but I could still hear the popping and crackling. I threw off the covers and stumbled over to the other bed, where Henry was sprawled out, sound asleep. I pulled back the heavy damask drapes and peered out in horror.
    The crackling was real. The shouting was real. The sky was an eerie melon color, and I didn’t know whether to stay or flee.
    The barn behind the inn was on fire.

Chapter Seven

    I DRESSED AS QUICKLY as I could. I was torn about whether to wake Henry, who hadn’t been roused by the sounds and light in back of the house. I wanted to help Lauren and Mark if I could, and that would be hard with a five-year-old in the mix. On the other hand, I didn’t want Henry to be terrified if he woke up alone in the room and opened the curtains to discover the barn in flames. Factoring in how soundly he usually sleeps, I decided to take my chances. I slipped into my jeans and boots and pulled a sweater over my head, then closed the drapes tightly and tiptoed into the hall. There, I broke into a run.
    Vivi
. It was all I could think. Furious at being banished from our room, I theorized, she had found a way to focus her anger on the decrepit old wiring in the barn, sending enough energy frizzing through a frayed antique tangle to cause sparking. That’s all it would have taken, really. I’d seen the barn’s interior a few hours earlier, when Henry and Mark had been scaling the fish, and it abounded with the usual clutter found in most people’s basements and garages: firewood, half-empty cans of paint, doors removed from their original locations, furniture awaiting refinishing or repair.
    Plans for restoring the hundred-year-old barn had fallen by the wayside as the costs of renovating the inn had skyrocketed, Lauren and Mark had told me over dinner. They’d had to settle, temporarily, for installing a new set of doors and