Glass Houses Read Online Free

made it her business to watch every evening. The newscasts were the excuse she made for not putting her foot down and making Elizabeth get rid of the television entirely. In their childhood, people of good family didn’t own televisions. They had them in the maids’ rooms for the maids, who couldn’t help watching them because they were uneducated. She didn’t like to think of what it said about both of them that Elizabeth was now addicted to at least three soap operas and would give up an afternoon at the Philadelphia Museum of Art to watch the latest installment of
Days of Our Lives.
    Elizabeth was in the kitchen, sitting calmly at the little round table in the breakfast nook drinking tea. Her response to this crisis had not been satisfactory. As far as Margaret was concerned, nothing Elizabeth ever did had everbeen satisfactory. Even in their childhood, she had been both an embarrassment and a thorn.
    The kitchen was just across the hall from the spare room. Margaret gave one last look at the television set—they’d gone on to something else anyway; there was corruption in the Mayor’s Office, again—and went to find her sister. She could hear the light
chink
of china on china as Elizabeth put her cup into her saucer and picked it up again. If she was running true to form, she’d be doing the crossword puzzle when Margaret came in.
    Elizabeth was doing the crossword puzzle. She was also wearing sweat-pants and a sweatshirt, both black and oversized, ballooning around her small, spare frame.
    â€œReally,” Margaret said. “You look like one of those women in the park, the old ladies who jog and think it’s going to make them younger.”
    â€œI don’t jog.”
    â€œI know you don’t. You don’t do anything anymore. Why wouldn’t you come and listen to the story?”
    â€œI did come and listen to the story.”
    â€œI mean this time, on CBS.”
    â€œIt was the same story, Margaret. You can’t honestly tell me they gave you any new information.”
    â€œThey might have,” Margaret said defensively. “It’s a breaking story. It just happened. There could be new information at any moment.”
    â€œBut there wasn’t.”
    â€œNo, there wasn’t. But still.”
    â€œIt will all come out in the paper tomorrow, Margaret, or on the news. It’s not so important that I have to hear about it right away. Sit down and relax a little.”
    Margaret didn’t sit down. She went to the window over the sink instead. In their childhood, the family never came into the kitchen except to check on what the cook was doing. Now they ate in here all the time.
    â€œDoesn’t it matter to you at all? She was our maid. We knew her. A little, at any rate, because she didn’t speak English. But we knew her. And then there were the police, and all that trouble over Henry. He could have been arrested.”
    â€œMaybe he has been,” Elizabeth said.
    â€œDo be serious.”
    Elizabeth put down her crossword puzzle. “I am being serious. They said a man had been taken in for questioning, but they didn’t say who the man was, did they? Why couldn’t it have been Henry?”
    â€œHenry could never commit a murder,” Margaret said, “never mind eleven of them. This was the eleventh, did you know that? Anyway, we discussed allthis when Conchita died. You agreed with me that Henry is not, well, not misformed in just that particular way. He isn’t a
violent
man.”
    â€œNo, he’s not,” Elizabeth said. “But I wasn’t saying that he
might
have committed the murder; I was saying he might have been
arrested
for it. It’s not that farfetched, Margaret. The story said the body had been found on Society Hill.”
    â€œThere are a lot of people who live on Society Hill. Henry isn’t one of them. He lives here with us.”
    â€œHe stays here with us when