Three Days to Never Read Online Free

uncle.
    â€œNot Budweiser, thank you,” he said stiffly.
    Daphne put the other can on the counter by her father, and looked at the cork bulletin board on the wall. “Her keys are gone,” she noted.
    â€œProbably in her purse,” her father said. “Moira?” he said into the telephone. “Did Grammar die? What? This is a lousy connection. Bennett told me—we’re at her house. What? At her house, I said.” He popped open the beer one-handed. “I don’t know. Listen, are you sure?” He took a long sip of the beer. “I mean, could it have been a prank call?” For several seconds he just listened, and he put the beer can down on the tile counter to touch Grammar’s electric coffee grinder; he flipped the switch on it, and the little upright cylinder chattered as it ground up some beans that must still have been in it. He switched it off again. “When did the hospital call you? Talk slower. Uh-huh. And when you called them back, what was the number?”
    He lifted a pencil from a vase full of pens and pencils and wrote the number on the back of the Bell Cabs card.
    â€œWhat were the last two numbers? Okay, got it.” He put the card in his shirt pocket. “Yeah, me too kid. Okay, thanks.” He held the receiver out to Bennett. “She wants to talk to you. Bad connection—it keeps getting screechy or silent.”
    Bennett nodded impatiently and took the phone, and he was saying, “I just wanted to see if—are you there?—if there was anything here we’d need to bring along, birth certificate…” as Frank Marrity led Daphne into the dark living room.
    Grammar’s violin and bow were hanging in their usual place between two framed parchments with Jewish writing on them, and in spite of having been scared of the old woman, Daphne suddenly felt like crying at the thought that Grammar would never play it anymore. Daphne remembered her bow skating over the strings in the first four notes of one of her favorite Mozart violin concertos.
    A moment later her father softly whistled the next six notes.
    Daphne blinked. “And!” she whispered, “you’re sad about Grammar, and mad at her too—and you’re very freaked about her coffee grinder! I…can’t see why.”
    After a pause, he nodded. “That’s right.” He looked at her with one eyebrow raised. “This is the first time you and I have both had it at the same time.”
    â€œLike turn blinkers on a couple of cars,” she said quietly. “It was bound to match up eventually.” She looked up at him. “What’s so weird about her coffee grinder?”
    â€œI’ll tell you later.” In a normal tone he said, over her shoulder, “I don’t think my grandmother ever had a birth certificate.”
    Daphne turned and saw that Bennett had entered the living room and was frowning at the drawn curtains.
    â€œI suppose they don’t give birth certificates in Oz,” he said. “We should fix that window.”
    â€œI can use her Makita to screw a piece of plywood over it from the inside. You think we should call the police?” Her father waved at the violin on the wall. “If there was a thief, he didn’t take her Stradivarius.”
    Bennett blinked and started forward. “Is that a Stradivarius?”
    â€œI was kidding. No. I don’t think anything’s been taken.”
    â€œVery funny. I don’t think we need to call the police. But fix the window now—we should all leave together, and only come here all together.” He rubbed his mustache. “I wonder if she left a will.”
    â€œMoira and I are on the deed already. I can’t imagine there’s much besides the house.”
    â€œHer car, her books. Some of this…artwork might be valuable to some people.”
    To some weirdos, you mean, thought Daphne. She was suddenly defensive about the