Read Online The Stone House by Marita Conlon-Mckenna - Free Book Online Page A

for what had happened, that no matter what anyone had said, she still considered herself a part of the domino-like chain of awful events that resulted in her small brother’s death.
    Her mother visited Dr Deegan every few weeks and was on small yellow pills that calmed her and helped her to sleep and bury the rage that still engulfed her from time to time. Aunt Vonnie patiently listened to her talk and encouraged her to go for walks and drivesand get some fresh air as she began to take tentative steps back to normal life. Their father, withdrawing from family life, lost himself in projects, developing the Old Mill, putting in a tender to bid for building a new area health clinic, and investing in a raft of businesses, including shares in a racehorse.
    â€˜He’s gambling and drinking and never home,’ their mother complained. ‘He won’t even sit in a room and talk to me.’
    Kate sensed her father’s fear that, if he did sit down to talk about little Sean and how he felt, like a tall tree he might topple over and end up on the same yellow pills from Dr Deegan that her mother was on.
    â€˜Men always feel they have to be strong, and bottle things up,’ Aunt Vonnie said, shaking her head. ‘It does them no bloody good, but they do it anyway. Joe’s the exact same!’
    July was sweltering hot. Romy, wanting to stay out till midnight and hang around the town like a stray, was packed off to Connemara to Irish college with three friends.
    â€˜It’s not fair,’ she’d complained. ‘My Irish is crap and I won’t be able to speak to anyone for nearly a month.’
    â€˜That’s why you’re going,’ insisted Maeve, as she packed Romy’s underwear and spare jeans and a rain jacket into the navy suitcase. ‘Living and talking constantly with the other students and going to the classes is bound to improve it. Besides, you’ll enjoy yourself.’
    â€˜You’ll have a great time,’ promised Kate. ‘I loved the Gaeltacht and the ceilis at night are great crack!’
    â€˜And good kissing practice,’ confided Moya. ‘That’s where I met my first boyfriend.’
    â€˜I suppose,’ agreed Romy. ‘Anyways it’d be good to get away from this morgue of a place.’
    â€˜Don’t let Mammy and Daddy hear you say that!’
    â€˜Why not? It’s the truth!’
    The South-East basked in glorious summer weather. Rossmore’s holiday cottages and hotels were packed with visitors, the beach and cove crowded with families in swimsuits and shorts sunbathing and jumping in the sea. Most mornings Maeve Dillon walked down to the church to ten o’clock mass, going into the graveyard to say prayers on her way back. It was the routine of some of the elderly and the widows of the parish. Kate wondered why her mother had opted to join them. At home, she donned a sloppy T-shirt and a pair of beige trousers and spent the day in the garden, weeding, tidying, planting and pruning. The garden was a myriad colours and shapes, climbing full-headed roses tumbling from the walls as delphiniums and lupins burst from the flowerbeds. She broke for lunch, which was salad and brown bread served on the round wrought-iron table on the patio, even for visitors. Kate helped by mowing the lawn and at night hosing the garden and watering the parched plants. Moya refused to get her fingers and nails dirty with garden work.
    John Joe, the local handyman had been down to the house removing a wasps’ nest from the overhead beam at the corner of the french windows, and had spotted another one hanging from the eaves above Romy’s window.
    â€˜â€™Tis the heat, Mrs Dillon, has brought them all out this year. I’ve never seen the like of it. McHugh’s discovered one in an air vent for the pub and sent one of the young barmen up on the ladder to try to do it. Drove the wasps crazy! And Cyril McHugh had to stand two