Journey Read Online Free

picture just before Grandfather’s smile faded, “that I sat on my papa’s lap. I remember the button on his shirt. And he sang to me and held my hands. And he wouldn’t let me fall. He and Mama kept me safe and took care of me until…”
    I put the camera down and stared at it.
    Until you made them go away.
    The words were unspoken, but when Ilooked up again, I might just as well have said them out loud by the look on Grandfather’s face.
    “Where are the pictures?” I asked.
    “What?” asked Grandfather. “What pictures?”
    “The pictures of Papa and Mama and me. And Cat. When we were babies like Emmett? When I was on Papa’s knees?”
    Grandfather looked down at the floor.
    “There weren’t many,” he said.
    “I don’t need many.”
    Grandfather sighed.
    “They’re gone,” he said.
    Gone.
    “You mean Mama took them?” I asked.
    Grandfather took a deep breath and looked me in the eye.
    “The truth?”
    My skin prickled.
    “Yes. Did she take them?”
    “No, Journey,” said Grandfather. “Your mama tore them up.”

Chapter Six
    “I don’t believe you’re sick,” says Cat, standing over my bed like an umpire over home plate. “And if you are sick, you’re glad of it. You like us to bring you soup and ginger ale.”
    “I have a sore throat,” I tell her, pulling the covers under my chin.
    “Let’s see,” says Cat, trying to pry my mouth open.
    I can hear Grandma in the kitchen practicing scales on the flute.
    “I have a temperature, too,” I say.
    “How many blankets do you have here? One, two, three, a quilt, a bedspread. Journey, you’ve got five blankets, and it’s summer! You may turn into a butterfly.”
    “Cat, Mama tore up our pictures.”
    “Yes.”
    “You knew? Why am I the last to know any thing?”
    “You know things, Journey. You just don’t want to believe them. You believe what you want.”
    Cat, in a sudden motion, whips my covers off.
    “Cat!”
    She lets the window shade snap up, and sun clatters into the room. I put my hands over my eyes.
    “You’re not sick, Journey,” says Cat, standing at the window. “You’re hiding out.”
    * * *
    Grandma was surprised to see me dressed.
    “Journey, are you feeling better?”
    “Cat made me get up.”
    Grandma smiled. She put her flute on my bureau.
    “Cat is a woman of action. She doesn’t believe much in introspection.”
    “Introspection?”
    Grandma sat on my bed.
    “What you’ve been doing in here the past two days. Thinking, mostly about yourself.”
    I looked up quickly to see if this was an insult, but Grandma was looking out to the garden, where Cat was hoeing between the rows.
    “Cat believes that if she keeps busy all the things that bother her will go away,” said Grandma.
    “Does that work?”
    Grandma turned to look at me.
    “Not entirely. No more than thinking. But you will notice,” she added, “that my garden is twice the size it was last year.”
    I looked out at the rows of lettuce and radishes, the fernlike tops of carrots. Grandma had turned up more grass this year, and she had even planted corn that stood stomach high to me. We watched Cat finish a row, then stand back, wiping the back of her hand over her forehead. She lifted her shoulders suddenly, then began working again.
    Grandma leaned against the window frame and looked out, past Cat in the garden, past the meadows. Her face looked sad.
She missesMama, too.
Aunt Lancie and Uncle Minor had moved away, and they visited sometimes. But Mama had stayed on to live with Grandma. Mama and Papa. And Mama was the youngest.
    “We all do the best we can, you know,” said Grandma. “Your sister and I garden ourselves into madness.” She looked at me. “You think yourself into a sore throat.” She sighed and gestured toward the barn. “And your grandfather takes pictures.”
    Grandfather, his camera around his neck, was prowling along the stone wall outside, his eye on Cat. Through the window we could see him say something. We could