Bronze Pen (9781439156650) Read Online Free Page B

autographs. But once she was alone again, in her own room, it quickly faded into a different scene. One that was more immediate and demanding and at least a little bit more real. A scene that took place in a forbidden cave and included a strange, half-seen creature and a white duck.
    Lying in her bed late that night, still wide awake and still trying to think it all through, Audrey gradually came to a decision. It was beginning to seem more and more important for her to go back just once more. To go back if only to be absolutely sure how much of it had been the way she remembered it and not simply another case of “overactive imagination.”
    CHAPTER 5
    S HE DID GO BACK, OF COURSE, BUT NOT right away since Monday was the beginning of another school week. A week in which Audrey, as always, had to hurry home so her father wouldn’t have to be alone any longer than absolutely necessary. It would be best, according to Dr. Richards, if someone could be there constantly to call for an ambulance if John were to suddenly become unconscious. But with Hannah working and Audrey in school, and with no money to pay for a daytime nurse, that wasn’t possible. So Hannah worked the late shift at her office, and by taking an early class and skipping study hall, Audrey was able to get home by one o’clock. That left only about two hours in the middle of the day when John Abbott had to be alone.
    On Tuesday the weather was warm and dry, and on her way home on the city bus Audrey looked out toward the hills and pictured herself scrambling up the trail that ledto the cave. It just might be possible today to get away for a little while when her father was busy reading. She had begun to imagine what it would be like and what she might see when a different scene began to take over. The same one that had so often oozed out of the dark corners of her mind in the long months since her father’s heart attack. A homecoming scene in which she ran into the house calling out, Dad. Dad, I’m home. And there was no answer.
    So every day all that week, just like every week, from early afternoon until her mother got home at almost seven, Audrey was with her father, reading to him or listening to him read, playing chess or checkers, or simply doing her homework while he read the paper. For a while there had been some TV watching. Not much, because they both preferred reading, but none at all lately because the ancient TV wasn’t working well, and all the new ones were too expensive.
    It was still early on Friday afternoon when, on her way to the kitchen to make some tea, Audrey stopped in a spot of sunshine that was spilling in through the dining room window. Paused long enough to stare up toward the distant hillside, trying to follow the trail with her eyes and once again letting her mind wander back to the strange things that had happened last weekend. Back to the strangely demanding duck and the old woman who could not only read minds, but somehow knew how to make people reveal their deepest secrets.
    She was still looking out the window when she heard her father say her name. Just, “Audrey?” but with a questioning rise at the end, and when she turned to look at him, his smile and raised eyebrow did ask a question before his expression faded into something that looked like an apology.
    And then John Abbott said it out loud. “I’m so sorry about you having to be cooped up in here with me every afternoon. I’ll bet you could find a lot of exciting things to do if you didn’t have to rush home to babysit your old man. Things like you and Debra used to do, for instance.”
    Audrey smiled and shrugged. “It’s okay,” she said. “I don’t mind.” But she did mind, at least she did right at that moment, because of the need to get away, and her father probably knew it. He was pretty good at knowing what a person meant, even when they didn’t quite say it. But she did go on to