Free An Unlikely Friendship by Ann Rinaldi Page B

her ten yards of yellow muslin or a new bonnet or some new kid gloves. It's the only way she'll come 'round," Betsy said sarcastically.

    T HERE IS A HOLE inside me because of the loss of Mama's clothing, a hole I have never been able to fill. I dream, at night, of crossing that attic room and opening the blanket to find nothing. And searching and searching all over the room, with panic inside me, hoping to find it in some deserted corner.
    I see her blue taffeta dress, her lace collars, her black shawl, her tea-colored lace blouse. I hold them up in my dreams at night and they disappear in my hands.

T HAT SUMMER , as well as the cholera and the confusion of moving, we had the seventeen-year locusts visiting, singing their monotonous song in the background, no matter what was going on.
    They were especially loud the day Liz and I brought our things to the new house. It was brick, and Pa had had the whole thing redone so that, except for the large rooms, it no longer resembled Palmentier's Inn.
    Those large meeting rooms had been made into parlors. It had six large bedrooms and a two-room nursery and a new piano in one parlor.
    All the furniture was new. There was nothing here that had been my mother's, except for the silverware stored in the pantry.
    There was a bathtub in the back hall, and in Pa's study at least two hundred books.
    I knew, in an instant, that I could not call this place home. I brought my few things upstairs to the room I was sharing with Liz.
    "Which bed do you want?" she asked. She was holding Pierre in her arms, deciding where to put him down.
    "I don't care. I won't be here that much," I said dismally. "This is your room, not mine. I'm the guest this time."
    "You can have the bed near the window," she said generously. "And I wish you were going to be here all the time. I'm going to miss you, Mary."
    I nodded and lowered my head. Tears came to my eyes. And then she gave the conversation a new turn.
    "Did you know your brother George refuses to come here?"
    My head shot up quickly. "What do you mean?"
    "He told me so. He said he's not going to leave the old house. He says it's lonely now, and he doesn't want to leave the place where his mother lived."
    Oh sweet Lord,
I thought.
Now were going to have trouble.

    A MID ALL THE confusion downstairs, Pa stood, directing the servants where to put things and announcing to all of us that we were having a special supper of turkey and hickory-cured ham and cake from Monsieur Giron's tonight at six, and he wanted us all present to celebrate our first dinner in the new house.
    "That includes George," he said. "Mary, go upstairs, find him, and tell him so."
    "He's not here," Levi volunteered.
    "Where is he?" Pa asked.
    "In the old house," Levi said. "He doesn't want to leave."
    Pa sighed and looked at me. "Mary, go and talk to him. Tell him what I said."
    "Yes, Pa." I walked out the front door slowly.
    "Good luck," Levi whispered. And he grinned at me as I went out.

    G EORGE WAS SEATED on the stairway when I went in, surrounded by empty space. Why is it that a house looks so sad when it is empty? He looked up at me. "Hey," he said.
    "Hey."
    Afternoon sun streamed in the windows. Dust motes floated. "You got any food?" George asked.
    "For that you have to come to the new house. Pa wants you there. He said we're having a special supper tonight and he wants everyone there. He sent me for you."
    In the silence that followed the locusts droned and bounced their sound off the walls. It was eerie.
    "You can't stay here, George," I pushed.
    "And I'd like to know why not."
    "Because Pa will soon sell it, if he hasn't already. New people will move in."
    "I can stay until they do."
    I sat down next to him. "I know it's hard, leaving. I miss it already, too. This was Ma's house. It remembers her."
    He nodded. "That damned Betsy," he said quietly. "If it wasn't for her, Pa would never have moved. Now she wants me in her house, at her table." He shook his head, sighed, and rested