Read Online Up High in the Trees by Kiara Brinkman - Free Book Online

and look at the picture of Mother ice-skating with Cass and Leo. Mother’s laughing and you can see her pretty teeth. They’re so white.
    Sebby, Dad calls for me again.
    The fire’s burning and he’s lying in his sleeping bag. Mine’s rolled out next to his.
    We’ll clean up in the morning, says Dad.
    I lie down and take off my glasses. In my room, I set my glasses on the table next to my bed. Here, I don’t know where’s a safe place, so I put them back on.
    Dad, I say quietly. He doesn’t answer.
    I can’t fall asleep with the fire so bright and lights still on all over the house.

    Mother was going to have a baby girl. We were going to name her Sara Rose. Two names like one.
    I think of the baby’s name like this: Share a rose. Sir, a rose. Is air a rose.
    I never got to meet her. She’s with Mother. She was there on the night that Mother died and now they’re still together.

    Dad’s not in his sleeping bag anymore when I wake up.
    Dad, I say as loud as I can.
    In here, he says.
    He’s up on a ladder in the kitchen, pulling spiderwebs off the ceiling. The ceiling’s dark wood and the spiderwebs are like thin clouds.
    I need to write a letter, I tell Dad.
    Just a minute, Sebby, he says.
    I stare up and watch him work. In my head, I count to sixty. Dad, I say, it’s been a minute.
    He comes down the ladder and looks at me.
    A letter? he asks.
    I nod.
    Dad starts looking through all the drawers in the kitchen. He brings me the red colored pencil and two dirty pieces of white paper that both have a bunch of numbers added up on one side and nothing on the other side.
    This is all we’ve got for now, he says.
    I lie down on my stomach and start coloring over all the numbers until I make that whole side red. Then I turn the paper over. I think first about what I want to write because the red pencil doesn’t have an eraser.
    I write, Dear Katya. It takes me a long time to think of what else to put. Then I write, I’m sorry that I bit you andmade you cry. I draw her a picture of a boat floating in the middle of an ocean to fill up the rest of the page. Above the boat, I draw a big red sun in the sky. Since there’s another piece of paper, I write another letter.

    Dear Ms. Lambert,
    I want to write you a letter.
    Mother grew up in this white house. I like the white house, but there are closets and drawers that I still need to look in. I have to see where everything is so when I close my eyes, I can see it all in my head. I don’t know what room was Mother’s room.
    Here is a picture of the house. Do you like it?
    Bye, Sebby

    The shed in the backyard is the same white box shape as the house, only smaller. I slide open the door and inside is dark with a smell of cold leaves and gasoline. I like the gasoline smell. It’s a metal taste all the way in the back of my throat.
    I find a lawn mower, a rusty toolbox, and a plastic Christmas tree. Against the back wall, there’s a yellow bike with purple streamers in its handlebars.
    I reach my hand out, but I have to step closer to touch the bike. It feels wet-cold.
    In here is the kind of quiet that makes you want to touch something or make something move.
    Really fast, I grab on to the bike’s handlebars and push it out of the shed. Then I let go.
    The bike falls sideways on the grass and a bell on the handlebar rings.
    I run away, back inside the house.
    In the kitchen, through the window above the sink, I can see the shed and the yellow bike with the handlebars twisted, pointing up at the sky. I can see the dock, too, the one that goes all the way out to the ocean, but you can’t walk on it because it’s blocked by an orange and white road sign that says, NOT SAFE .

    Dad wanders around the house with his cup of coffee.
    All day, he’s been walking around like this, moving furniture, setting up everything. I follow him to the room at the very end of the hall upstairs.
    You