Read Online You Are My Only by Beth Kephart - Free Book Online

yellow rose, and touches the head of a boy in summer plaid; she is alone. When the clock above the signboard clicks 7:47, the station becomes chaos and time.
    â€œNo harm,” Arlen says, “in sitting still for just one moment.”
    Where Arlen goes I can go. Where he won’t I cannot. Across the farthest distance, near the ladies’ washroom, on the far other side of things, a woman in white paces a short distance. Her skirt swishes. It nicks and swirls. She walks into a sunbeam and out of a sunbeam, over and over again. “Harrisburg,” the blare says. “Last call.” And now again the woman turns, and this time when she does, I see how her arms are shaped into a hollow and how inside that hollow is bounce and tremble. She walks and her skirt swishes. She walks and she bobbles her parcel. She walks and she is nervous, back and forth, and all of a sudden, in the crackle of waiting and watching, I smell Baby. Absolutely.
    â€œArlen!” I say. “Arlen! It’s her! Her and my Baby!”
    I point, and he stares. I point, and he won’t move, and the lady’s skirt swishes in the pearl light of the beamed sun; her arms hold Baby. “Arlen!” I call out. “What’s the matter with you? Look!”
    But Arlen won’t move. He shakes his head and says, “That’s just a woman, Emmy, not a thief,” and I say, “Arlen, that’s a woman stealing Baby!” His hand is claw and his arm is pressure. He nooses me into himself.
    â€œYou’re seeing things.”
    â€œDon’t do this, Arlen,” I say. “Don’t ruin me and my Baby.” I hop and he holds me, and now with the hand with which I have been pointing, I make a fist and I pound at whatever part of him I can. “Look,” I say, and he squints and I squint, and now the sun is all of a sudden all wrong, leveling a haze down in that far corner.
    Arlen says, and I hear the words, and the words are wrong: “Emmy. Love. Listen to me. It’s just your imagination.”
    â€œI saw something, Arlen. I smelled it. Smelled Baby.” Pounding my hand on his chest, pointing in Baby’s direction.
    â€œEmmy, it’s all right. We’ll find her.” He wrestles with me, won’t let me go.
    â€œWe already have!”
    â€œThere’s no one there. There’s nothing but sun.”
    And suddenly I don’t hear the overhead blare. Suddenly the sunspots burn, and the faraway corner is fuzz and blur. A crowd has gathered, and over the sound of Arlen talking, there’s the sound of another kind of hurry. There’s blare in the streets and blare coming through, someone saying my name, Mrs. Rane. “We have a situation, Mrs. Rane.”
    â€œLeave me!” I scream. “It’s her! It’s the thief who has my Baby!” But now it isn’t Arlen’s hands but another pair of hands upon me, and I hear Sergeant Pierce on his walkie-talkie: “Suspect’s been found. We’re taking her in.” I feel my arms pulled back behind me, the slap of two cuffs on my wrists.
    â€œBack off, now. Back away,” the sergeant says, and I can’t see and I can’t feel whomever he is talking to, and I can only hear Arlen, loud, Arlen defensive: “Sir! She means no harm. She is a mother.”
    There’s another sergeant and he gathers up my feet. There’s a crowd and it breaks. I am carried from the station like a sling.
Sophie

    â€œIt’s the nutmeg,” Miss Cloris is saying, “that makes it special. You ever have nutmeg?”
    â€œNot that I know of, ma’am.”
    â€œBorn of a tree,” she says. “The Myristica fragrans. Now, isn’t that some name for a tree?”
    â€œNice as acacia .”
    â€œSure is. Here. Have another.”
    The custard’s the color of eggs and milk browned over by spice. Miss Cloris baked it and set it to cool inside a dozen dishes, each one no