Moonlight & Vines Read Online Free Page A

saying. “I’ve been wanting to meet you ever since I read
Mirrors
.”
    Her eyebrows arch with curiosity. “You’ve actually read it?” she asks.
    â€œA number of times. I’ve tried to find your other two collections, but so far I haven’t had any luck.”
    Saskia laughs. “I don’t believe this. Newford’s own Jan Harold Brunvand not only knows my work, but likes it, too?”
    It never occurred to me that she might have read any of my books.
    â€œOkay,” Geordie says. “Now that we’ve got the mutual admirations out of the way, let’s just try to enjoy the afternoon without getting into a book-by-book rundown of everything the two of you have written.”
    He seems as relaxed as I am, but I’m not surprised. We always do better in other people’s company. It’s not that we feel as though we have to put on good behavior. For some reason we simply don’t pick at each other when anybody else is around. He also reads voraciously and loves to talk about books—that’s probably the one thing we really have in common beyond the accident of our birth—so I know he’s kidding us. I wish we could always be this comfortable with each other.
    We both love books, only I’m the one that writes them. We both love music, only he’s the musician. That makes us something of a rarity in our family. It wasn’t that our parents didn’t care for culture; it’s just that they didn’t have time for it. Didn’t have time for us, either. I’m not sure why they had children in the first place and I really don’t know why they had three of us. You’d think they’d have realized that they weren’t cut out to be parents after our older brother Paddy was born.
    The only thing they asked of us was that we be invisible which was like an invitation to get in trouble because we soon learned it was the only way we’d get any attention. None of us did well in school. We all had “attitude problems” which expanded into more serious run-ins with authority outside of school. The police were forever bringing us home for everything from shoplifting (Geordie) and spray-painting obscenities on an underpass (me) to the more serious trouble that Paddy got in which eventually resulted in him pulling ten-to-fifteen in a federal pen.
    None of us talked to each other, so I don’t know for sure why it was that Paddy hung himself in his cell after serving a couple of years hard time. But I can guess. It’s hard to be alone, but that’s all we ever knew how to be. Walled off from each other and anybody else who might come into our lives. Geordie and I made a real effort to straighten ourselves out after what happened to Paddy and tried to find the kind of connection with other people that we couldn’t get at home. Geordie does better than I. He makes friends pretty easily, but I don’t know how deep most of those friendships go. Sometimes I think it’s just another kind wall. Not as old or tall as the one that stands between us, but it’s there all the same.
8
    Holly looks up in surprise when I walk into her shop the next day.
    â€œWhat?” she asks. “Two visits in the same month? You sure you haven’t gotten me mixed up with a certain blonde poet?”
    â€œWho?” I reply innocently. “You mean Wendy?”
    â€œYou should be so lucky.”
    She accepts the coffee and poppyseed muffin I picked up for her on my walk from the bus stop and graciously makes room for me on her visitor’s chair by the simple expediency of sweeping all the books piled up on it into her arms and stacking them in a tottery pile beside the chair. Naturally they fall over as soon as I sit down.
    â€œYou know the rules,” she says. “If you can’t treat the merchandise with respect—”
    â€œI’m not buying them,” I tell her. “I don’t care how