Nothing but Ghosts Read Online Free

system.
    “Looking forward to the champagne,” says Reny.

Chapter Six
    D ad’s got himself a new painting. It arrived today in a U-Haul truck, courtesy of some local museum that itself got the painting courtesy of some anonymous donor. He says that it came all mummy wrapped, not as tall as me, but more than twice as wide as I am tall. It’s so messed up, he says, that you can only see dark shadows of things—figments, he calls them, that suggest a world.
    “What kind of a world?” I ask, waiting for him tofinish his lemoned asparagus, which he eats with his fingers as if each stalk were a carrot stick.
    “A metropolis,” he says, raising his eyebrows and wiping his hand across his apron lap before reaching for a roll.
    “Which metropolis?”
    He’s sprinkled capers on the veal, like olive-colored salt pills.
    “None that I’ve ever seen.” He slaps half a stick of butter on his warmed-up bread, which is something he and Mom would have fought about, except that they hardly ever fought. “At least I’ll die happy,” he’d say if she wrinkled her nose, but he’ll never say that again, because happiness, we know this absolutely now, is not what dying is about.
    “So this is it now? This painting? Your next big thing?”
    “Biggest canvas I’ve ever worked on.” He smiles. “A veritable mystery. It arrived at the museum wrappedin shower curtains. Polka-dotted shower curtains that had a crust of mildew.”
    “Weird,” I say.
    “Which reminds me,” he says. “How is our Miss Martine?”
    “Same as always.”
    “Another figment, wouldn’t you agree?”
    I nod and shrug at the same time. “I was up around her house today.”
    “Did you knock?”
    “No way. You kidding?”
    “I knocked once.”
    “You did?”
    “Your mom sent me out with a basket of fruit. She’d heard it was Miss Martine’s birthday.”
    “When was this?” I ask, and I’m about to say, And why did you never tell me?
    “Your mother was pregnant with you at the time. She’d been talking to somebody who knew somebodywho knew about Miss Martine’s big day. She said that if nobody else was going to throw the heiress a party, she at least could send her some fruit.”
    “Except that she sent you.”
    “She did. That’s true. Because she was pregnant and I insisted.”
    “So what happened?”
    “Nothing happened. No one opened the door.”
    “Not even Old Olson?”
    “Not even.”
    “That’s strange.”
    “Figments,” he says. “I’m telling you.” He puts the last of the butter on his little shelf of roll, then wipes the leftover juices from his plate. He chews away and swallows down, then unties his apron. “I should go on one of those reality TV cooking shows,” he says.
    “Right.”
    “I should,” he says. “I would be famous.”
    “I thought you already were.”
    “There’s famous, and then there’s famous. I’m thinking of going for the second kind.”
    “Sounds like you’ve got a painting to restore first.”
    “I’ve got a painting,” he says, “to resolve.” He looks at me, and I see the dark beneath his eyes.
    “I’m on cleanup duty,” I say.
    “I’ll trade you cleanup duty for a call you make to Ellen or to Jessie. I’ll give you the car. I’ll lift the curfew.”
    “Hey, but no thanks,” I say.
    “You sure, Katie?”
    “I’m sure.”
    “You’re a good kid, you know. You don’t have to be a perfect one. I’m okay here, on my own.”
    “Will you get out of here?” I tell him, reaching to collect his plate. “You’ll miss your show.” He looks at me with his sad eyes and drinks down the rest of his lemonade.
     
    The weird thing about cricket song is how the sound never stops but there’s still space between the beats. On the front stoop I sit and think about this, try to picture the crickets in the grass, the way Mom once explained them to me. She said that crickets think in terms of trills and pulses, that they use their abdomens and their wings to sing, and that