Dismantled Read Online Free Page A

anger, it’s about exercise.
    “Then quit being a dumbass,” Mel says. “Come on.”
    Mel makes her way out of the house and to the barn, Emma behind her, stopping in the front hall to whisper nine when Mel’s out of earshot—smart as she is, there are some things Mel just doesn’t get. Like the importance of Francis. And Danner. Mel doesn’t get Danner at all. If Danner shows up when Mel is over, Emma just has to pretend Danner’s not there. Sometimes this makes Danner mad—she doesn’t like to be ignored.
    It takes Emma eighty-one steps to get to her father’s barn. Very lucky. Nine goes into eighty-one nine times, which makes it the square root. Trees have roots and so do numbers.
    It doesn’t get much luckier than eighty-one.
    When Emma gets to the barn, she sees Mel has lit up one of her homemade cigarettes. Mel uses Wrigley chewing gum wrappers and dried herbs from her kitchen: oregano, basil, thyme.
    “You can’t smoke that inside,” Emma says.
    Mel rolls her eyes, licks her thumb and forefinger, and pinches the burning end of the Juicy Fruit cigarette until it’s out. Then she puts the remains into the Altoid tin she keeps her smokes and pack of matches in.
    Mel and Emma start with the south side of the barn, the part converted into living quarters. It’s a studio apartment—one compact room for cooking, eating, and sleeping, and a bathroom tucked into a corner. Emma’s grandpa had it built as a little retirement cottage for himself. He didn’t want to be “in the way” in the main house and felt he didn’t need much space of his own. He was ready to downsize. To simplify.
    It doesn’t take Emma and Mel long to search the small living area. Her dad doesn’t have much stuff: a daybed, a desk, some shelves, and a table with two chairs. It feels more like a motel room than a home, and this gives Emma hope. Like somehow he knows it’s only temporary, that he’ll move back into the house one day, so it’s best not to get too settled in the barn.
    They move through the kitchenette and open the door to the other side, where her dad has his workshop. It’s an old horse barn, but the stalls and loft were taken out. Now it’s just one huge cavernous space, big enough for a small airplane, Emma guesses. The workshop smells like sawdust and grease. There are metal shelves, workbenches, and tools from three generations of DeForge men: a lathe, drill press, band saw, table saw, seemingly endless hand tools. Her dad also keeps some company equipment in the barn: an extra power washer, scaffolding, broken ladders.
    Mel steps through. Emma’s heart is pounding. She knows she’s not allowed in there. She has this sense that if she passes through the doorway without her father’s permission, something terrible is sure to happen. She hesitates at the threshold, turns the doorknob nine times each way, but the feeling doesn’t go away.
    “Sometimes my dad comes home for lunch,” she says.
    Mel checks her watch. “Please! It’s ten thirty, Em.” She flips on the lights. “Now get in here and help me.”
    Emma holds her breath and steps through. Nothing terrible happens. Not yet. But the truly horrible things take time.
    “Global warming,” she whispers. “Cancer.” She imagines one little cell somewhere in her body going bad, dividing into another.
    “What?” Mel barks.
    “Nothing.”
    There, in the center of the cathedral-size room, raised up on its own specially constructed frame, is the dugout canoe Emma’s dad is making. He’s installed bright track lighting above it, leaving the rest of the workshop in shadow. Large and pale, with graceful curves, the canoe reminds Emma of a long, white dolphin. It makes her nervous, seeing something so obviously meant for water stuck on land. Not just stuck, but held with wooden clamps and braces. Imprisoned.
    “You look over there,” Mel orders, pointing to the metal shelves and cabinets that line the east wall of the workshop. Mel goes to the old