A Family Apart Read Online Free Page B

understand you,” Mike said. “The frontier’s exciting! I’ve heard the tales about wide open spaces filled with herds of deer and buffalo! Think of this—each man has his own horse and can ride for miles and miles without seeing a single building! And there are Indians who ride wild horses and gallop down from the hills, whooping and hollering! I’d like that, I would!”
    Frances sniffed. “Huh! If all that is true, then the West, with all its wild ways, is a place where I’m never going to be, and you can bet on that!”
    Mike plopped his empty bowl onto the table and picked up his shine kit. “Off to meet the swells!” he said. “Let’s hope the dust from yesterday’s wind dirtied a lot of boots.”
    Ma smiled. Mike, whose infectious grin was as bright as his tousled red hair, could always make her smile.
    “Wait for me,” Danny cried through a mouthful of gruel.
    “Hurry up, then,” Mike said. He pulled on his jacket and cap as he walked toward the door. Although Danny was an inch taller than Mike, who was small for his age, Mike, as older brother, had no trouble keeping Danny in line.
    Now was Frances’s chance. She slipped up behind Mike and pushed him into the hallway, quietly shutting the door behind her. “I have to talk to you, Mike,” she said. “I want to ask you a question.”
    He grinned. “If you’re lucky, I’ll give you an answer.”
    “It’s about last night. You got home just before Ma and me. She didn’t see you, but I did.”
    “When you came in, I was sleeping soundly.”
    “I saw you open one eye.”
    Mike pretended to look surprised. “One eye, was it? Then tell me, what was the other eye doing all this while?”
    Frances couldn’t keep from giggling. “Mike,” she said, “be serious.”
    Danny rushed into the hallway so fast he almost collided with Frances. “I’m ready, Mike!” he shouted. Danny was barefoot, as Mike was, and he had no jacket to wear over his shirt and knickers, having grown so fast during the summer he couldn’t fit into the only one he owned. Danny looked from Mike to Frances. “What are you two talking about?”
    “Nothing,” Mike said.
    But Frances was not going to be put off. “Danny,” she said, “do you know where Mike was last night?”
    The guilt on Danny’s face was as thick as jam as he answered, “Wasn’t he home in bed?”
    Frances sighed. She’d get nowhere with Danny. After Da had died, Danny had clung to Mike as though he were a father. “In bed is where Mike should have been,” Frances said.
    “And isn’t that where you found me?” Mike looked at her with wide-eyed innocence.
    Frances pretended to scowl, but she couldn’t keep the smile from her lips. She was much too fond of Mike ever to be angry with him. “You think you can talk yourself out of anything!” she called after Mike, as she watched her brothers run down the hallway and out the front door of the building, but she wondered with a shivering doubt about his ability to talk his way out of
everything.
    Frances hesitated a moment outside the room whereMara lived. People were up and about, as she knew they would be. Mara’s Uncle Gerik opened the door to Frances’s knock. He was a ragpicker by trade, who searched through scraps and gutters for rags, then washed and sold them. By this time he should have been out on the streets with his cart.
    “How is Mara? Please don’t tell me that she’s worse!” Frances stammered.
    As Uncle Gerik’s eyes shifted to avoid Frances’s gaze, she frantically squirmed past him and into the room. The Robis had even less furniture than the Kellys, and the bare wooden floor of their room was dusty with lint from the piles of rags in every corner.
    Mara, who lay on a small pallet, was covered with a thin, dirty blanket. Her dark hair was so damp it was plastered to her skull as though it had been painted there, and her cheeks were red and flushed. Frances gasped. The smell of illness, so strong in spite of the thick