Gingersnap Read Online Free

pumping the bicycle wheels. His hand went to the bell on the front, a telegram in his fist. Celine turned. The two of them leaned toward each other, Stuart doing the talking.
    Celine’s hand went to her mouth, and they both looked up the hill toward me.
    That was all I saw.
    That was all I needed to see.
    I ran through the hall toward the stairs, knocking over the almost-genuine Ming vase, hearing it shatter into a hundred pieces. I stopped to lock the front door so Stuart couldn’t give me that telegram.
    My feet clattered up the stairs, the bedroom door banged shut behind me, and I slammed into the closet, sinking down in the middle of Celine’s clothes,smelling the camphor balls she’d strewn around to protect against the moths.
    The telegram.
    Did they all begin the same?
We regret to inform you …
    That meant Rob.
    Would they regret that something had happened to him?
    His ship:
a destroyer fast and sure, cutting through the waves
. But the Pacific Ocean was huge and dark. It was filled with sharks gliding under the surface, while overhead, fighter planes were diving, diving.…
    While I was wearing a hat with a veil, was Rob in the mess hall? Still all right? Not guessing what was going to happen? And while I was studying the products of New York State in school, had the water covered the deck and flooded down the stairs toward him?
    Or had there been an explosion? Had he heard the sound of it, that terrible roar?
    My dear Rob, big and bulky, who loved to cook, who loved to eat.
    Rob, my brother.
    Rob, who was all I had.
    Stuart was knocking. It hadn’t done any good for me to lock the door. Celine had a key. Of course she did. Sometimes she left it in the Ming vase. I remembered the sound of the metal dropping against the china.
    No more.
    No more Ming vase.
    No more Rob?
    They were in the house.
    I pictured them stepping over the shards of the vase. “Jayna, where are you?” Celine called, her voice trembling.
    I buried my head in a long silky gray dress with a scalloped hem. I couldn’t imagine that Celine had ever worn something like that.
    She was coming up the stairs. Then, through the small crack of light, I saw her standing in the doorway. “Jayna?”
    My mouth was pressed against that silky dress, the smell of camphor so strong I could feel it burning my nostrils and my throat.
    Celine took a few steps across the room and opened the closet door. “You have to come out.” She was breathless. “Stuart is here from the telegraph office. He has a telegram. It’s for you.”
    She had to know what it said, but I couldn’t open my mouth to tell her that.
    “Don’t worry about the vase,” she said.
    The vase?
    “It was only almost genuine. It wasn’t important, after all.”
    Celine being kind. It made it all worse somehow.
    I stood up, rattling the hangers; the dress slid to the floor in a puddle of gray.
    I went past her down the stairs to the hall, where Stuart was standing in the midst of broken china.
    “I’m sorry, Jayna,” he said, and handed me the beige envelope.
    I ripped it open. Yes, someone was regretting about Rob. He was missing, but they’d let me know further details as soon as they were available.
    Just words, each one pasted on the telegram paper. Not even kind words.
    Stuart ran his hand over his bald head; then he was gone.
    Celine came down the stairs toward me, her arms out. She held me against her pillow body, both of us rocking back and forth.
    Celine.
    It was hard to believe.
    I stepped back and shrugged into my jacket, which was on the stair post.
    “Let’s have tea,” she said. “A nice cup of tea always helps.”
    “I have to go home,” I said.
    “But there’s no one there.”
    No one.
    I listened. Did the voice say, “He’s still alive?”
    But it was only the sound of my own footsteps going down the street.

Chapter 6

    I went back to the pond, to Theresa, who was swimming lazily with only her head and her dark eyes above the water.
    What was I going to