Free The Puzzle King by Betsy Carter

Hannah, he called her Harry. Hannah called him Ziggy, because she claimed he looked more like a Ziggy than he did a Paul. Aunt Hannah and Uncle Paul shared code words that could summon up a memory in a heartbeat. That’s how it was with them. They had private jokes and secrets and did whatever they could to reinforce the clubbiness of their family. They lived in a colonial-style corner house in Mount Kisco surrounded by privet and linden trees that smelled like sweet lime blossoms on a summer day. Their family was very close. Paul and Hannah’s daughter, Ruth, grown now and out of the house, still wore her mother’s gold baby ring on a chain around her neck, and never a week went by that they didn’t receive a funny note or drawing in the mail from their son, Lev, who had recently moved to Chicago.
    To Aunt Hannah and Uncle Paul, the world was split evenly between takers and givers. Takers tended to be “pretentious,” and “imbecilic,” two of the first words Flora learned when she came to America. Givers were “civic minded” and “generous,” and although they would never claim that they were the latter, Aunt Hannah and Uncle Paul were the ones who insisted that the girls stay with them when Flora’s mother first brought up the idea of sending her daughters to America.
    S EEMA GRABBED F LORA’S bags and pretended to be bogged down by the weight of them. “You’ve brought everything but the kitchen sink.” Seema had been slower to master English than Flora, and she was still delighted with herself eachtime she came up with an American aphorism or slang phrase. In Seema’s case, it only added to her allure. Flora hadn’t seen her sister in four months, and each time she did she seemed even more beautiful than the last. Young men were always trying to help her choose the correct word and get rid of the Teutonic sludge in her accent. But young men were always trying to help her with everything, and Flora knew it would only be a matter of minutes before some eager fellow with glowing cheeks and a hopeful smile would come up to Seema and offer a hand with the luggage.
    Flora laughed, so happy to see her sister after all these months. “I didn’t know which dress to bring, so I brought four of them.”
    “So, you are turning into a fashion plate, are you? Well, I’m sure all of them will turn heads.”
    Flora walked beside Seema. Even amid the crowds in the dimly lit station, Seema glowed. She laughed and tossed her hair. One young man did come up and offer to take her bags, but Flora could tell that with his shabby suit and dirty fingernails he didn’t stand a chance. “Thank you, but I can manage,” said Seema, not even meeting the boy’s gaze. Flora straightened her spine and tried to keep up with her sister’s brisk pace. She wondered if she would tell her sister about the strange man on the train. No, not while Seema was shining all of her attention on her.
    A whole weekend with Seema. She wished she could make the next two and a half days last forever. Seema was working as an au pair for the White family. He was a wealthy banker, an old friend of Uncle Paul’s, who had three children and lived in one of the new brownstones on Fifth Avenue. Although Seema hadbeen with the White family since the winter, this was the first time Flora had ever visited. When Flora had asked Aunt Hannah and Uncle Paul if she could go in and spend the weekend with her sister, the two of them had pretended to be in a fix about whether or not to allow her go. “I don’t know,” said Uncle Paul with mock seriousness. “Two beautiful young women alone in the big city could be catastrophic. What do you think, Harry?”
    “Flora’s only fifteen. Can she really take the train by herself? Maybe it will be too much for her, Ziggy.”
    Back and forth it went like that until they finally, and with great fanfare, decided that yes, she could go. “On one condition, Miss Chatterbug,” said Uncle Paul. “You mustn’t talk to