Free The One Hundredth Thing About Caroline by Lois Lowry Page A

law."
    "But—"
    "No buts. I understand, my little paleontologist. You are frightened of this man."
    "He looks like Tyrannosaurus Rex," Caroline pointed out once more.
    "I understand even that. Many of these great beasts take on human qualities for me, too. And Tyrannosaurus—ah, the Great Killer. He is the most horrible of all. He could take you and me together, Caroline, and crush us both in his teeth, and his small brain would have no room in it to feel compassion."
    "What if he lived right upstairs from you, Mr. Keretsky?" Caroline asked him.
    Gregor Keretsky smiled at her. "It is only a man that lives upstairs, my small scientist. Don't forget that. The world of science must never mix daydreams with reality. These beasts that you and I know so well? They are all in the past. They don't live upstairs, not anywhere. It is a man. It is a man named—what did you tell me?" He leaned forward, his chair squeaking, to peer at the name on the envelope.
    "Frederick Fiske," Caroline reminded him.
    "Yes. Frederick Fiske. A man's name, that is all. Just as the name Gregor Keretsky is the name of a man, an absent-minded man who sees no colors. And the name Caroline Tate, the name of a girl who should maybe be home by now, helping her mama get the dinner
ready?" He grinned at her and looked at his watch.
    "But Mr. Keretsky, remember the other letter? The one about getting rid of the kids? And remember I didn't open that one. It was already open and thrown away."
    "Yes, I remember. But there too, Caroline, the daydreams are getting in the way of the thinking. Would a killer—even a killer who looks like the Greatest of Killers—so casually toss away evidence of such a thing? Remember that a man has a
big
brain. This letter you showed to me, surely it has some other meaning. Why did you not show it to your mama?"
    "She would have laughed. She would have said that the eighty-third reason she loves me is because I make her laugh so often."
    "And is it such a bad thing, to laugh? There is not enough laughter around; that is what I think."
    Caroline sighed. She didn't feel at all like laughing. "I thought that if I opened just this one, Mr. Keretsky—"
    "No. You must not. In this country it is the law, and one of the most important of laws. A man's mail is his own. It is one of the reasons I came to live in America, Caroline. I have lived in other countries where this could happen, that a man could be accused, his mail opened, false evidence used against him..." His voice trailed off, and he gazed through the small office window. "You go home now, Caroline," he said finally, after a long silence. "Come back tomorrow, or maybe
Saturday, and I will tell you about the conference in London. I brought you a present, but it is at my apartment because I did not expect to see you today. When you come back, I will tell you about London, and we will eat ice cream together. How would that be?"
    Caroline stood and put the letter back into her pocket. "All right," she said. "I'd like to hear about the London conference. And about London. Did you see the Queen's Guards with the red coats?"
    "Ah, Caroline." Gregor Keretsky chuckled. "You are teasing me. You know that for me even the coats of the Queen's Guards would be gray. You're the most colorful thing in my life, Caroline, and even then, the color is all here"—he tapped his chest—"in the heart. Never in the eyes. What color are those very practical-looking trousers you are wearing?"
    Caroline started to laugh. "Mr. Keretsky," she said, "jeans are always blue."

    Walking slowly back home, Caroline took the sealed letter from her pocket and turned it over and over in her hands. Mr. Keretsky was right, she knew. Once, when she was a little girl and still believed in magic things, she had had a crush on Santa Claus; she had imagined him to be kind and wise and full of fun. Now Gregor Keretsky was all those things—and more, because his past had taught him something