Free The Silent Boy by Lois Lowry

cars, and though they had watched with interest as Gram left the train with all of her things, I could tell that now their thoughts were
moving on to their own destinations and whatever families, jobs, and vacations lay ahead for each of them.
    "That ' s new paint there, isn 't it, Katy?" Gram asked, pointing to a house on the corner. "I believe that house was gray on my last visit. And now look: it ' s sparkling white. Things change so when you've been away."
    I nodded. "And, Gram," I told her, "there was a terrible fire at Schuyler ' s Mill. People were burned but no one died, Gram, because Father took care of them."
    "The good Lord helped, I expect," Gram said.
    "Maybe.But,Gram?
Colloidal silver.That
' s what the doctors used. And tannic acid."
    I could see Father smiling as he tapped the horses gently with the buggy whip and steered them toward home. "Katy aims to be a doctor when she's grown," he explained to Gram.
    "I
never,
" Gram said. But she was smiling.
    At home she hugged Mother, saying, "Caroline, Caroline," holding her carefully because of her size and the baby inside. "It won ' t be long, will it?"
    Father took her coat and hat after Gram had carefully undone the hatpin that held it firmly on her gray hair. Peggy came from the kitchen, looking shy, and was introduced.
    There were gifts: baby clothes, lovely things that Gram had embroidered herself; and for me, a
book:
Elsie Dinsmore.
I had already read it from the library but didn't tell her that, and it was good to have it for my own, though in truth I didn't like the girl Elsie much. She seemed too good and had no spunk. Peggy thought the same; we had read it together.
    Gram brought greetings from my mother's brother, Uncle James, and from Aunt Eleanor and the Cincinnati cousins. Gram lived at Uncle James's house, and I could tell that she didn't like Aunt Eleanor, though she was careful to say only nice things. There was always a little tone to her voice when she spoke of Eleanor, what a fine house she kept, and such a civic-minded woman.
    Uncle James had been just a baby, and mymother only three years old, when my grandfather died. He took sick, she said, one morning, and was gone by nightfall, nothing anyone could do. For that reason Gram always wore a black ribbon around her neck, in mourning. The photograph we had of my grandfather showed him looking no more than a boy, though he was twenty-seven when he died. I wondered sometimes: if they were to meet in heaven, Gram and the young husband she still grieved for, might he still be that young boy and she a gray-haired lady with a mourning band around her neck, and a feathered hat held on by a pin? If so, I thought they would hardly have much to say to each other at all.
    I loved Gram. She talked to me as if I were a grownup, and on earlier visits she had taught me card games (Naomi disapproved; her church thought playing cards were of the devil) using the playing cards that she always carried with her in her bag. She played something called patience, by herself, laying the cards out one by one on the table by the parlor windows.
    When she went upstairs to freshen up, I followed along behind and took her down the hall to see the nursery with the baby clothes all waiting and the pink and white blanket Mother had knitted folded on the arm of the rocker.
    "Mother and Father say they don't care, but I do hope for a boy," I confided to Gram.
    "It ' s nice to have both," she said, nodding her head. "I remember being glad when James was born, to have a boy after a girl. But most of all, you hope for the baby to be healthy and strong."
    "And not marked," I added. "Our grocery boy was marked on his face because his mother was frightened by something hideous and placed her hand just so." I showed her, with my hand to my chin.
    Gram made a tsk-ing sound. "I ' m sure your mother has taken very good care of herself," she said, "and your baby will be perfect. Whoever told you that about the grocery boy? Not your father,