Buttons and Bones Read Online Free Page A

cabin.
    “Are we here yet?” asked Emma Beth.
    “Yes, darling, we’re here.”
    “Yaaaaaaay,” said Emma Beth. “Look, Godmama, we’re here! Wake up, Airey, we’re here! Airey, Airey, wake up!” She reached over and pushed Betsy into the side of Erik’s car seat.
    Erik, startled, began that thin wailing of a baby awakened against his will.
    “Are we going to have that kind of weekend?” asked Lars in a very heavy voice.
    “No, Daddy,” said Emma Beth humbly.
    “Good.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Very good.” Lars shut off the engine and climbed out. His open door admitted a heavy fragrance of pine.
    He opened the door on Emma Beth’s side and unbuckled her seat belt. He lifted her out and then suddenly up and around, high in the air. She shrieked with laughter.
    Betsy slid out on the same side and stood for a few moments, enjoying the sunshine and clean, sharp-scented air.
    Meanwhile Jill opened the door and unbuckled Erik from his car seat. “Ma- ma !” he wailed, and she lifted him into her arms.
    “There, there, baby,” she soothed, and he quickly fell silent while he looked around with wet, wondering eyes.
    Emma Beth, put down, turned slowly to look up at an enormous pine going up, in her eyes, forever. “Oh my goo’ness!” she murmured. “Oh my goo’ness, is this tree ours?”
    “Yes, darling,” said Jill with laughter in her voice.
    Lars said complacently, “All these trees are ours.”
    But what Betsy was looking at was the pretty little cabin across the clearing. A for-real log cabin, with a low-pitched roof and a tiny porch. An old-fashioned long-handled pump was near the left corner, standing on a circle of gray planks. The cabin was right on the edge of a drop-off, down which marched more trees. She walked toward them, past the cabin, for a look downward, and saw a very crooked path—a series of uneven switchbacks really—that led down among brush and pine trees to the shore of a lake. She couldn’t see more than a twinkle of water because of the foliage. Some kind of bird was calling in a monotonous high-pitched skree, and a squirrel scolded nearby.
    “Betsy?” called Jill.
    “Coming!” She turned and went back around to the front of the cabin, where Jill and Lars stood. The children watched curiously from the patchy lawn behind them as their mother made strange ducking and waving motions. As Betsy got closer, she could see why: spider webs, some with spiders on them.
    “Honestly, you’d never think I cleared the spiders off just last weekend!” exclaimed Jill, waving her arms. Betsy admired her nerve; if she had encountered a set of spider webs, she’d have retreated to the car until someone else cleared the porch of them.
    The porch was a small concrete slab about the size of a city sidewalk square, set with two slender pillars holding up a tiny peaked roof. Two long boards leaned against the outsides of the pillars, helping them support the roof. The concrete slab sloped forward just a little from the front door, making Betsy wonder about the stability of the soil under the cabin. But surely, over a century, the porch would be tilted farther down than that if the soil were really unstable.
    “Ahhhh,” sighed Jill at last, dusting her hands and brushing at the long sleeves of her shirt, satisfied that the porch was clear. There were still a few webs stretched between the roof of the porch and the debarked logs of the cabin’s front wall.
    Lars opened the sagging screen door and unlocked the gray wooden door behind it. He had to push hard—and he was a big, strong man—before the door opened with a groan.
    Emma Beth came close behind her father and mother into the cabin, Betsy bringing up the rear holding Erik’s wee little hand.
    The house appeared dark after the bright sunlight of the clearing, and they all stood a few moments to allow their eyes time to adjust.
    They stood at one end of an open room twenty-four feet front to back. The walls were chinked logs and the