Ghost Letters Read Online Free Page B

Ezekiel Finch, painted just before he left for India. There was a resemblance to the boy in the other picture. His eyes were the same pale blue, and his mouth was similar—neither a smile nor a frown. His hair had receded and he was wearing a formal black frock coat, with a red silk scarf knotted at his throat. On a table in the painting, next to Ezekiel’s right hand, lay a jeweled inkstand set with rubies and emeralds. A quill pen rested beside it. Prescott pointed to the inkstand.
    â€œThat’s a gift Ezekiel was going to give Camellia Stubbs, the woman he loved. Ezekiel knew that Camellia had a passion for writing and he ordered it especially for her, all the way from India. The stand was made of gold, encrusted with jewels, and the two ink bottles were the finest crystal. Supposedly, it cost eight hundred dollars in those days. Of course, when Camellia turned down his proposal, Ezekiel was heartbroken. Nobody knows what happened to the inkstand. There’s a rumor he buried it before he sailed for India, but it’s never been found.”
    â€œIf it cost eight hundred dollars back then, it must be worth a ton of money now,” said Gil, peering at the painting.

7
Curried Okra
    By the time Nargis got home, her mother was already cooking dinner. The smell of frying onions and the peppery tang of spices greeted her before she opened the front door. Though Nargis loved the food her mother made, she was self-conscious about the smells of Indian cooking that drifted out of their house into the neighborhood. Most of the other people on their street had backyard barbecues, and the charred odor of grilled meat filled the air. Nargis’s family were vegetarians, and the cooking smells from their home were mostly frying onions, ginger and garlic, mixed with cumin and coriander.
    â€œCome and help me,” Savita Khanna said as Nargis entered the kitchen.
    â€œI’ve got homework, Mom!” said Nargis, though she knew the excuse wouldn’t work.
    â€œThen why were you cycling around, when you should have been studying instead?” her mother asked.
    Catching sight of a pile of okra on the kitchen counter, Nargis was glad to see that her mother was cooking her favorite vegetable. She was still unsettled by what had happened at Trash Hill—discovering the skeletal hand, then having it disappear. The whole thing just didn’t make sense. Nargis had decided not to say anything about what she’d seen. She knew her parents didn’t like her bicycling alone around the town dump.
    â€œWash your hands,” said her mother. “Then you can cut the bhindi for me.”
    Though Nargis was born in Carville and had lived here all her life, her parents had emigrated to the United States from India, almost twenty years ago.
    â€œMom, why can’t you call it okra instead of bhindi?” said Nargis as she rinsed her hands in the sink. The dark green vegetables were about three inches long, a tapered pod with ridges on the sides and a furry skin.
    â€œA bhindi is a bhindi,” her mother said patiently as she peeled ginger and garlic.
    â€œBut it’s also okra,” said Nargis. Picking up a knife, she cut off the end of one of the pods. It was sticky and clung to the blade. Inside, she could see the glutinous white seeds. Raw okra didn’t look very appetizing, but when it was fried up with onions and spices, there wasn’t anything Nargis liked better. She was already starving.
    â€œYou can call it what you want, but hurry and finish cutting—quickly now,” her mother said. After Nargis had chopped most ofthe bhindi into segments, her mother added, “You know, some people also call it ‘lady fingers.’”
    Looking down at the vegetables, Nargis shuddered. “That’s disgusting,” she said.
    As she sliced the last few bhindi, she remembered the bare bones and knuckles in the mailbox and the flowery stench. Imagining five green