Free Orphea Proud by Sharon Dennis Wyeth Page A

sure.”
    “But you said—”
    “I love you, Orphea.”

    Morning came. I opened my eyes. Snow was falling outside the window. She touched my foot with her toe.
    “Sleep okay?” I tried to sound casual.
    “Not really.” Already the sun was bright.
    “We slept a long time.”
    “Not me. I was awake, thinking.”
    “About us?”
    “Of course.”
    “Are you sorry?”
    “No. I can’t help who I love.”
    “I’m scared, Lissa.”
    “Me too. That’s why I yelled at you yesterday in the kitchen. But it’s my life, Orphea. Nobody else’s.”
    I reached over her chest and clicked on the radio. I turned up the volume. She stroked my hair. I looked into her eyes. Her eyes were laughing. We kissed and kissed again. My secret was out and it wasn’t a giant. It was a beautiful rainbow.

    I’m the one who started it, that afternoon in the kitchen. If she hadn’t come to my house that day, she’d still be alive. It wasn’t Rupert or Ruby’s fault that she died. It was mine.

If I dream you, will you dream me?
    Will you be my eye?
    To view me on a gauzy plain
,
    Wrapped up in the sky?
    Tell me true
    And I’ll tell you
    What love is all about
    Toss our secrets in a wishing well
    And do away with doubt
    So dream of me
    I’ll dream of you
    Then we’ll dream a dream of us
    Seen by all who care to view
    Love’s haunted trust

AUNTS
    Proud Road is good sleeping country. I slept for a week when I first got there, snuggled in a bed too small for me beneath Aunt Cleo’s quilts. The room where Aunt Minnie put me was a loft overlooking the front of the house; the view across the road was a big field and a tilted mobile home. Other than getting up from time to time to grab a cold biscuit from the kitchen downstairs or take a trip to the bathroom, I was pretty much in a coma. On the day I finally woke up, for a minute I felt like I was in Heaven. Cozier than a sleeping bee—that’s how I felt, breathing in the fragrance of woodsmoke, wiggling my toes beneath the fat covers,running my hand across the grate on the floor to feel the heat floating up from below. I lay there listening to the sounds that had already become familiar: the
clomp-clomp
of Aunt Minnie’s boots as she paced, the creak of Aunt Cleo’s wheelchair as she went off to the bathroom, the heavy thud of a new log on the fire, the clank of the woodstove when its door was shut. On top of that, outside it was snowing hard as a torn feather pillow. Perfect, except that Lissa wasn’t there. She would have loved all that coziness, I thought. She would have gotten a kick out of the Aunts; the way Aunt Minnie chewed tobacco and spit out the juice in an old coffee can—I’d seen that the very first morning—and Aunt Cleo counting the money in the register over and over, making sure the books were balanced, I guess. Of course, there weren’t any customers. A good thing, since there didn’t seem to be much to sell. It was almost as if time had stopped for the Aunts; so I let time stop for me. One thing I couldn’t stop, though, was the pain. Lissa was gone.
    “Welcome back,” Aunt Cleo said when I appeared downstairs.
    I smoothed my overalls. They were even more rumpled than usual.
    “Sorry I slept for so long.”
    “You needed it. Bed fit all right?”
    “If I curl up my legs.”
    Her eyes twinkled. “Same bed you slept in when you were little.”
    “I don’t remember.”
    “Don’t you, now?”
    “No. Sorry.”
    “Nothing to be sorry about.” She wheeled across the room to the table. “Minnie is getting your breakfast. We heard you stirring.”
    I sat down and she placed herself across from me.
    “Arthritis,” she said. I’d been staring at the wheelchair.
    “Sorry.”
    She smiled. “Wasn’t your fault.”
    I let out a nervous laugh. “I know that. I just meant that it’s too bad.”
    “Oh, I get by. Lucky I’m a storekeeper. My sister, Minnie, thinks the store is too confining. But it works out fine for me.”
    I glanced at the