Eleanor Read Online Free

body.  
    There is a pickup truck parked at the opposite end of the small lot. The only other person in the world arrived at the beach while Eleanor’s eyes were closed. She can see the shape of a person inside, perhaps enjoying the weather. She doesn’t wave, doesn’t care.  
    The beach stones are black and wet and shiny. Eleanor crosses them slowly, but she isn’t worried about slipping and falling down. There are two sandpipers pattering around, dipping their beaks into the sand after each receding wave. The clouds in the distance are pulling apart like taffeta, black feathery tendrils separating from their bodies. More rain. Harder rain.  
    Eleanor walks to the edge of the beach and stands there a moment in her heavy wet housecoat. The waves are needle-sharp as they smack her ankles and feet. She closes her eyes again, hands deep in her pockets, and thinks of Hob and his pleasant smile and his broad shoulders and secrets and his carefully parted slick hair and his deep, sad, true eyes. She thinks of Agnes and her knotted hair and the wrinkle lines around her little dark eyes when she smiles and her cute small earlobes and her favorite song.  
    They’ll be all right, she knows.  
    Eleanor pulls her housecoat off, sleeve by sleeve. It grabs at her skin as if resisting, but she casts it onto the beach. She bends over and grasps the hem of her nightgown, the wet flannel squishy between her fingers. She gathers it into her fists, lifts it up and over her head. Naked, she faces the ocean calmly. The rain is bitingly cold, the wind worse.  
    Behind her she hears the muffled sound of a car door opening, and then a distant male voice shouts something.  
    She doesn’t answer or look back.  
    Eleanor steps into the ocean and strides forward, the water reaching her knees, then her hips. When she’s waded in waist deep, she spreads her arms wide behind her and lunges forward into the water, and she begins to swim, and swim, and swim.





The twins are six years old—just weeks away from their shared birthday—when it happens.  
    Agnes rushes about the house, looking for her rain boots.  
    “Esme,” Agnes huffs as she climbs the stairs. “Ellie—have either of you seen my galoshes?”
    “They’re called rain boots, Mom,” Esmerelda shouts. “Galoshes are the things you wear over your shoes.”
    “Those are called overshoes,” Agnes says.  
    “No, they’re—”
    “Just—” Agnes pauses on the landing, breathing hard. “Stop. Just stop.”
    Esmerelda stands in the doorway of the girls’ bedroom. She shrugs, then squeezes past her mother and walks to the bathroom.
    “Where’s your sister?” Agnes asks.  
    “Attic,” Esmerelda says, and shuts the bathroom door.  
    Agnes sighs irritably and raps on the door with her knuckle. “Make it fast in there,” she says. “Your father’s going to be waiting at the airport for us.”
    “Whatever,” Esmerelda says, her voice muffled by the door.
    Agnes pounds the door sharply with her fist. “Young lady, you’re too young for ‘whatever,’” she snaps. “Save it until you’re thirteen. What are you doing in there?”
    Esmerelda doesn’t answer. Agnes turns and leans against the wall and presses her fists against her eyes and drops her mouth open in a hushed scream. Then she straightens up, pushes off the wall, and unclenches her hands slowly, stretching her narrow fingers wide until they tingle slightly. She takes a deep breath, exhales.  
    “One thing at a time,” she says softly. “One thing, one thing.”
    She stands there for a moment, almost swaying on her feet, eyes still closed.  
    Then she opens them, and goes to the attic door and opens it.  
    “Ellie!” she shouts up the stairs. “You better be ready!”

Eleanor sits alone in her father’s workshop, studying the tiny, unfinished house. It’s dim in the attic. The rain has turned the world outside to pleasant gray. She prefers days like this to any other kind of day. There