A Widow for One Year Read Online Free

staring at the photograph.
    And that was what set the memorable old story in motion; from the very first line, Ted Cole knew this story by heart.
    “Tom woke up, but Tim did not.”
    Ruth shivered in her father’s arms. Even as a grown woman, and an acclaimed novelist, Ruth Cole could never hear or say that line without shivering.
    “Tom woke up, but Tim did not. It was the middle of the night. ‘Did you hear that?’ Tom asked his brother. But Tim was only two. Even when he was awake, he didn’t talk much.
    “Tom woke up his father and asked him, ‘Did you hear that sound?’
    “ ‘What did it sound like?’ his father asked.
    “ ‘It sounded like a monster with no arms and no legs, but it was trying to move,’ Tom said.
    “ ‘How could it move with no arms and no legs?’ his father asked.
    “ ‘It wriggles,’ Tom said. ‘It slides on its fur.’
    “ ‘Oh, it has fur?’ his father asked.
    “ ‘It pulls itself along with its teeth,’ Tom said.
    “ ‘It has teeth, too!’ his father exclaimed.
    “ ‘I told you—it’s a monster!’ Tom said.
    “ ‘But what exactly was the sound that woke you up?’ his father asked.
    “ ‘It was a sound like, in the closet, if one of Mommy’s dresses came alive and it tried to climb down off the hanger,’ Tom said.”
    For the rest of her life, Ruth Cole would be afraid of closets. She could not fall asleep in a room when the closet door was open; she did not like to see the dresses hanging there. She didn’t like dresses—period. As a child, she would never open a closet door if the room was dark— out of fear that a dress would pull her inside.
    “ ‘Let’s go back to your room and listen for the sound,’ Tom’s father said. And there was Tim, still asleep—he still hadn’t heard the sound. It was a sound like someone pulling the nails out of the floorboards under the bed. It was a sound like a dog trying to open a door. Its mouth was wet, so it couldn’t get a good grip on the doorknob, but it wouldn’t stop trying—eventually the dog would get in, Tom thought. It was a sound like a ghost in the attic, dropping the peanuts it had stolen from the kitchen.”
    And here, the first time she heard the story, Ruth interrupted her father to ask him what an attic was. “It’s a big room above all the bedrooms,” he told her. The incomprehensible existence of such a room terrified her; there was no attic in the house where Ruth grew up.
    “ ‘There’s the sound again!’ Tom whispered to his father. ‘Did you hear that?’ This time, Tim woke up, too. It was a sound like something caught inside the headboard of the bed. It was eating its way out—it was gnawing through the wood.”
    And here Ruth had interrupted her father again; her bunk bed didn’t have a headboard, and she didn’t know what “gnawing” was. Her father explained.
    “It seemed to Tom that the sound was definitely the sound of an armless, legless monster dragging its thick, wet fur. ‘It’s a monster!’ Tom cried.
    “ ‘It’s just a mouse, crawling between the walls,’ his father said.
    “Tim screamed. He didn’t know what a ‘mouse’ was. It frightened him to think of something with wet, thick fur—and no arms and no legs—crawling between the walls. How did something like that get between the walls, anyway?
    “But Tom asked his father, ‘It’s just a mouse?’
    “His father thumped against the wall with his hand and they listened to the mouse scurrying away. ‘If it comes back again,’ he said to Tom and Tim, ‘just hit the wall.’
    “ ‘A mouse crawling between the walls!’ said Tom. ‘That’s all it was!’ He quickly fell asleep, and his father went back to bed and fell asleep, too, but Tim was awake the whole night long, because he didn’t know what a mouse was and he wanted to be awake when the thing crawling between the walls came crawling back. Each time he thought he heard the mouse crawling between the walls, Tim hit the wall with his