Black-Eyed Susans by Julia Heaberlin EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Authors: Julia Heaberlin
- Language: English
- Genre: Psychological Fiction
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
Tessa, present day
For better or worse, I am walking the crooked path to my childhood.
The house sits topsy-turvy on the crest of a hill, like a kid built it out of
blocks and toilet paper rolls. The chimney tilts in a comical direction, and
turrets shoot off each side like missiles about to take off. I used to sleep
inside one of them on summer nights and pretend I was rocketing through
space.
More than my little brother liked, I had climbed out one of the windows
onto the tiled roof and inched my scrappy knees toward the widow’s peak,
grabbing sharp gargoyle ears and window ledges for balance. At the top, I
leaned against the curlicued railing to survey the flat, endless Texas
landscape and the stars of my kingdom. I played my piccolo to the night
birds. The air rustled my thin white cotton nightgown like I was a strange
dove alit on the top of a castle. It sounds like a fairy tale, and it was.
My grandfather made his home in this crazy storybook house in the
country, but he built it for my brother, Bobby, and me. It wasn’t a huge
place, but I still have no idea how he could afford it. He presented each of
us with a turret, a place where we could hide out from the world whenever
we wanted to sneak away. It was his grand gesture, our personal Disney
World, to make up for the fact that our mother had died.
Granny tried to get rid of the place shortly after Granddaddy died, but the
house didn’t sell till years later, when she was lying in the ground between
him and their daughter. Nobody wanted it. It was weird, people said.
Cursed. Their ugly words made it so.
After I was found, the house had been pasted in all the papers, all over
TV. The local newspapers dubbed it Grim’s Castle. I never knew if that was
a typo. Texans spell things different. For instance, we don’t always add the
ly.
People whispered that my grandfather must have had something to do
with my disappearance, with the murder of all the Black-Eyed Susans,
because of his freaky house. “Shades of Michael Jackson and his
Neverland Ranch,” they muttered, even after the state sent a man to Death
Row a little over a year later for the crimes. These were the same people
who had driven up to the front door every Christmas so their kids could
gawk at the lit-up gingerbread house and grab a candy cane from the basket
on the front porch.
I press the bell. It no longer plays Ride of the Valkyries. I don’t know
what to expect, so I am a little surprised when the older couple that open the
door look perfectly suited to living here. The plump worn-down hausfrau
with the kerchief on her head, the sharp nose, and the dust rag in her hand
reminds me of the old woman in the shoe.
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