sat still in her chair as if she couldn’t believe she was seeing it. I scrambled to my feet, retrieved the Bible, and carried it over to her. When she didn’t take it from my hands, I laid it in her lap.
“Which of you wicked children put it there?” she demanded.
Matt and I looked at each other. “Neither,” I said after a moment.
“Liar!”
I stepped back. Matt got a guarded look on his face.
Grandmother started paging through the heavy book, then looked up at the gap on the shelf where the Bible had been.
The pale blue of her eyes thinned inside a ring of white. “Put something there, Matt. Now!” she cried. “Put it there!”
Matt picked up several magazines and stuffed them in the space. “Are you all right?”
Her hands were shaking badly. “I’m looking for Corinthians,” she said.
“Can I help?” I asked.
“You stay away.”
I retreated to a chair.
“I have it,” she said, and began to read Paul’s famous passage about charity-what love is and isn’t. Her voice quivered when she read how all things but love would pass away. Matt stood close to her, his face lined with concern.
Despite what he had said before, he must have been worried about her state of mind. It was her intensity, the anger and suspicion with which she spoke, more than what she said, that was frightening.
She looked up suddenly. “Finish it, Matt. Verses eleven and twelve.”
“Why don’t we finish it later?” he suggested quietly.
“I want to hear it now.”
“You know I don’t like to read aloud.”
“Read it!” She shoved the book in his hands.
He hesitated, then took a deep breath and carried the Bible to her desk. Sitting down in front of the book, he focused on the page for a few moments, marking the place with his finger.
“When I was a. . a child/’ he began, “I… played-”
“Spake!” she corrected him.
“I spake as a ch-child, 1… understand-”
“Understood”
“I understood as a child.” His face was tense with concentration. “I tough as-”
“Thought!”
“I thought as. . a child.”
I listened with disbelief. Matt could barely read.
“But where I because a name-”
“But when I became a man,” Grandmother said in a low, ugly voice.
He nodded and swallowed. “I. . put. . away childish thoughts.”
“Things. Give it to me, Matt.”
“You wanted me to read,” he said, his jaw clenched. “I’m going to finish it.”
I closed my eyes, wishing I weren’t there.
“For no, we see. . uh-”
“Through a glass darkly,” I said softly.
“For now we see through a glass darkly; but the-but then.
. fa-face to face; No I now-” He shook his head and started again. “-Now I know in part; but there-then shall I now-knowever as also I am known.”
The passage was finally over. Matt looked grim and humiliated; I knew anything I said would only make it worse for him.
Anger simmered inside me. I didn’t know what made Grandmother act the way she did. It was as if certain things could turn on a switch in her and make her cold and mean.
What dark, distorted glass did she look through when she got this way?
I couldn’t begin to guess. Only one thing was clear to me: Matt was dyslexic and Grandmother was trying desperately to shame him in front of me.
I awoke Monday morning just as the sky was getting bright. I knew I was at Grandmother’s house, but something was different about the pale gray light. It reflected off a ceiling that was too close. My eyes traveled down to the walls.
Faded roses, huge as headlights, surrounded me. I wasn’t in my room. I sat up quickly and realized the surface beneath me was hard. I’d been sleeping on the floor of a small room that was wallpapered in roses.
I scrambled to my feet and went to a window. Below me was the herb garden and the long tin roof that covered the kitchen porch. I was in the back wing, in the room next to the one with the dormer windows where I had found the dollhouse. The closed door to my right must have led to that room. Opposite from it was an open door that revealed five steps, which rose to the second floor hall of the main house.
I walked slowly around the empty room, trying to remember how I had gotten here. I couldn’t recall waking up and moving. Was I sleepwalking? I had done it once or twice as a kid. I struggled to remember last night’s dreams, hoping for some clue as to why I had left my room. All I could remember was something round, a circle with bumps or marks on its circumference.
I wondered who had used this room and for what.
Perhaps it was a housekeeper’s or maid’s room. Then I recalled what Alice, the customer at Yesterdaze, had said.
“I’ve seen the ghost. In the rear wing, in the room above the kitchen.”
The skin at the back of my neck prickled. Avril? I mouthed her name, afraid to say it aloud, as if I had the power to summon her. Had she been here last night? Had I followed her here?
“Get a grip, Megan,” I muttered.
Wrapping my arms tightly around myself, I tiptoed back to my room. I didn’t know what unnerved me more: the possibility that Avril was real, or the fact that I could do something and have absolutely no memory of it.
The second time I awoke it was after eight o’clock, and Matt had already left for school. In the bright light the objects in my room-my hairbrush, the romantic paperback, the sweatshirt I’d left draped over a chair — seemed startlingly normal. I got up and began to brush my hair, standing in a swatch of sunlight, hoping it would melt away my uncertainty and fear. Everyone has nightmares, I told myself. As for the change in rooms, I had been sleepwalking.
Arriving downstairs, I found Grandmother pacing. When I greeted her in the hall, she jumped.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
“My clock is missing.”
“Which clock, Grandmother?”
She looked at me as if I should know. “The antique that sat on my desk in the library.”
“You mean the little gold one, the one with a picture painted on its face?”
“Where did you put it?” she demanded as if I’d just admitted guilt.
Indignation flared up in me. But I had moved myself without realizing it; how could I be sure I hadn’t moved a clock? And the fragment of my dream, a circle with marks on it-wasn’t that like the face of a clock?
“I don’t remember putting it anywhere,” I told her honestly.
“Have you asked Matt?”
“No, of course not. I can’t trust him anymore.”
“Why not?” I asked, walking over to the library door, scanning the shelves and tabletops.
“He has other loyalties now.” She said the words slowly, as if they held great meaning.
I moved across the hall to the dining room, my eyes sweeping that room-side tables, windowsills, mantel-any ledge that could support a small clock.
