Embers Read Online Free

gassin' up your car ... window-shoppin' on Cottage Street ... and every time, every time ... it give me such a start, I figured my heart would go, right then and there."
    He lifted one of his hands — big, misshapen, arthritic hands — and rubbed his brow with the tips of his fingers, as if he were stroking a lamp of memories, calling forth the genie of time past.
    "Even now," he said with a bitter sigh, "I have to pinch myself that you're not her. How could you be? She's dead; has been, this half a century."
    He continued to speak with an effort; every word seemed to cost him. "The thing is, when I met your grandmother, she was your age — that would be, what, thirty-some?" In the same mournful voice he added, "She was the most beautiful woman I ever saw."
    Meg smiled in disbelief, but the old man seemed not to notice. "I never loved another woman after your grandmother," he went on. "I never loved a single, other woman."
    Loved her? Since when? Who was he, and what in God's name did he have to do with her grandmother?
    "I never knew my grandmother," she told him. "I guess you know she died in the Great Fire of ‘47."
    "Of course I know it, gahdammit!" Orel Tremblay snapped. "Why d'you think I asked you here?"
    Meg said testily, "I don't have any idea, Mr. Tremblay."
    "True, true. How could you?" he muttered, fumbling with a control button on the side of his hospital-style bed. Slowly he raised himself into a semi-sitting position. After a deep breath or two, he reached over for a glass of water that stood on the bed table. The drink seemed to revive him: He was able td continue in a more civil tone, and his words flowed more easily.
    "I'm old, and I'm dying, and I know it," he said, dismissing her sympathetic protest with a fluttery wave of his hand. "I don't own much," he went on. "Just a few sticks of furniture that I made — I was a cabinetmaker — and the equity in this house. And the chipper-shredder. And the dollhouse."
    It was an odd list, but Meg let it pass; she was waiting, still, to see why she'd been summoned.
    "I have a niece somewhere who's bound to show up the day the will gets read," Tremblay said, snorting with derision, "and that's about it. Now. Help me out of bed."
    "Oh! Shouldn't I get the —"
    "Daow," he said, shaking his head impatiently. "No need. Just muckle onto that walker and set it alongside. The other bedroom's within hailin' distance. I'll make it," he said grimly.
    Meg helped the old man out of bed and into his slip-ons, and walked slowly alongside him as he shuffled behind his walker into the hall. The nurse popped her head through a doorway to see what her charge was up to, gave him a brisk, friendly smile, and retreated to another room. Meg and her host continued on their slow journey into the second bedroom.
    At the doorway, Orel Tremblay paused and jerked his head toward the room within. "I'll go first," he said, suddenly eager. His voice was shaking with anticipation.
    Meg waited as he preceded her, marveling that the frail, bent-over figure with the skinny calves and liver-spotted brow had once been passionately in love with her own grandmother.
    She stepped through the doorway after him. The room was dark; its shades were drawn, and the venetian blinds were closed. Then Orel Tremblay turned on a lamp.
    It threw dim, golden light over the most beautiful, the most exquisite, the biggest dollhouse Meg had ever seen, a masterpiece of gables, balconies, turrets, and chimneys, with many diamond-paned windows and stately French doors, the entire, wonderful structure sitting serenely atop a cherrywood table shaped to match its elaborate footprint. Orel Tremblay reached behind the dollhouse and threw another switch, and the whole weathered-shingle fantasy lit up from within like a Christmas tree.
    Meg was breathless with pleasure. A low, awed sound escaped her throat, and nothing more; the words simply weren't there.
    Orel Tremblay nodded his head vigorously. "Ain't it just?" he kept