Remembering the Bones Read Online Free Page A

loves, their pains. History is rewritten. I know that Case hasn’t taken the time yet to hear the stories, but maybe someday she’ll want to know about the family that came before her.
    Who, for instance, would have predicted that I would end up sandwiched between a daughter in her fifties and a mother who is a hundred and three? Each has a free side to do as she pleases, but I am in the middle, tucked to both like cheese on rye. Case decided to love a jazz musician. Phil loved my father, who owned the dry goods store in town. I chose to love Harry, a jeweller. Phil and Case and I may be from different generations, but we still share the same unbroken line of the past.

NINE
    A nd so I am stuck, a beetle on my back, talking to myself. I am the daughter of Philomena Danforth and the late Conrad Holmes, Conrad with a C. My father died after a long illness in 1945, shortly after my sister Ally’s wedding. His store was on Main Street in Wilna Creek, and everyone in town called him Mr. Holmes, even family. We all helped out in the store at one time or another, and frequently heard ourselves saying, “Let me ask Mr. Holmes about that. I’ll check with Mr. Holmes.” He died so long ago I have to strain to hear his shouts—and he did shout. At least that’s what I remember. He also wore a black patch, having been blinded by a stick in one eye as a child. I never met another member of his family, nor did my mother. His family was from the old country , he once said, and I saw his one eye water as he turned away. To me, the old country meant something vague, like the north of England, maybe a coal town in Wales. He had been an only child, and his parents were dead long before Ally and I were born. In some ways, Mr. Holmes was a mystery man in town.
    The women of the family took it for granted that they would outlive their men. It’s the way life keeps turning out. I’ve outlived Harry. Grand Dan outlived my grandfather, a doctor who was killed in the First Great War. Phil has outlived my father by more than sixty years, though she alarms people because she can faint at will. She drops to the floor when it pleases her, even at the Haven, though she’s careful how she falls. The Queen Mother outlived her husband; Victoria outlived Albert; Queen Mary outlived George V. It’s the way things have always been.
    I am from a family of ones: one mother, one father, one sister, one niece, one aunt, one uncle, one grandmother, one husband, one child, alive, Cassandra. We’ve always called her Case and, from the beginning, she loved her name.
    Harry, too, was an only—at least we thought he was. He was born in England, and came to the marriage alone.
    Grand Dan was a midwife. The last baby she officially delivered was me, on April 21, 1926. Regulations were changing; provincial laws were put in place. She delivered a few babies after me, but only when a doctor couldn’t be reached. When I came along, I knew from the time I could talk that Princess Elizabeth of York and I had entered the world on the same day. My sister Ally had already been born, two years before me. All our lives, we’ve counted on each other: Ally and George, Georgie and Al.
    There! I’ve managed to drag the bad leg behind me, but only three or four inches. Without painkillers. For all the progress I’ve made, I could have spared myself the discomfort. I won’t say the pain is unbearable, because I have no choice; I have to bear it.
    I’ve borne worse.
    Say it out, then, Georgie.
    Death. Darkness. I’ve had dark days. I try not to retreat into old shadows, but they’re there. I know they’re there.
    Life apportions, life takes away.
    I must not take on dark thoughts. If I get to the car, I might find something useful. Bandages. The first-aid kit has never been lifted out of the trunk. Even if I could reach it, what would I bandage and how, with one hand? My right arm won’t move. Good arm, bad arm. Good leg, bad leg. My knee hurts but at least it creaks