Embers Read Online Free Page B

looking out the gabled window at some imaginary vista beyond. She was the only doll in a shorter length dress.
    "I never knew the job was only a temporary placement," Meg said, filled with a sudden sense of loss. "How sad."
    "For God's sake! Didn't your people tell you nothin' about her?"
    "Yes, of course. I know that my grandmother was very devoted to her two sons," Meg said defensively. "My father still talks about the blueberry tarts she wheedled from the cook at Eagle's Nest for him and his brother — they were just boys when she died in the fire, of course. I guess the cook was from Paris and homesick, and my grandmother's Quebec French was very good. She used to listen to his stories."
    "Oh, yeah; the cook," the old man said, nodding. "Jean-Louis. Short fat guy with brown beady eyes. Couldn't speak a word of English. Personally I have no use for a man who can't be bothered to learn our mother tongue.
    "But that was your grandmother all over," he mused, rubbing the stubble of his beard. "Everyone loved her. She had this glow about her ... this wonderful warmth ... you couldn't help but be drawed to her. Everyone was. Everyone —"
    His expression suddenly turned dark and angry, surprising Meg once more; he seemed too fragile for such wrenching shifts of mood.
    "You have Margaret's smile," he said suddenly, veering away from his anger. "Not exactly the same: You're less open. More guarded. Well, that's no surprise," he said with a thin shrug of cynicism. "Times are different."
    But Meg was surprised, because she truly didn't believe that times were that different — at least, not in Bar Harbor . She didn't lock her door and she'd never been robbed and she always felt safe on the town's streets. She knew and liked everyone, and everyone knew and liked her. That was the whole point of living in a small town, even one as visited as Bar Harbor . That was why, like her grandmother, she'd never leave Bar Harbor .
    "Times aren't so very different, Mr. Tremblay," she argued, convinced that her smile was as open and unguarded as her grandmother's.
    He gave her a long, searching, and utterly dispirited look. "Maybe not," he said wearily. "Maybe not."
    There was a pause, and then he said, "She never did want to be more than my friend."
    "My grandmother, you mean," Meg said, shifting gears with him.
    Orel Tremblay nodded. "Oh, I'd of stole her away from her old man in a shot, if she'd of let me. Your granddaddy was a drunken lout," he said contemptuously. "He didn't deserve Margaret. But she was just ... so ... loyal, don't you know. To him, and to their two boys. And damn it to hell, it cost her her life. It was criminal."
    "What?"
    "You heard me."
    Meg was well aware that her grandmother had become trapped in Eagle's Nest during the Great Fire and had burned to death. Naturally her family had never dwelled on it, even though the fire itself was a major event in Bar Harbor 's history.
    Meg began edging away from the dollhouse. It seemed no longer charmed but sinister, a painful reminder of a family tragedy. As for her grandfather: yes, it was true; he drank. That was nobody's business, least of all Orel Tremblay's. Suddenly she was sorry she'd come.
    "Mister Tremblay. I don't understand what you're driving at. As far as I know, my grandfather and grandmother were a happily married couple — average happy, anyway. But even if they weren't, I don't see what the point is in your dragging up the fact. They're both dead now. I think the decent thing would be to let them rest in peace."
    "Aaagh, you're right," Orel Tremblay said, more annoyed than embarrassed. "Why ever did I bother? Never mind. What's done is done. Mrs. Billings!" he shouted, with astonishing vigor.
    The nurse came in, and Meg went out. That was the end of her visit with Orel Tremblay, unrequited lover of Margaret Mary Atwells.
    ****
    At the family supper that night, Meg's strange and wildly unsatisfying visit with Orel Tremblay was the hot topic. Nothing else could