Free The Uninvited by Tim Wynne-Jones Page A

these jaunts of yours?”
    Cramer dug his hand deep into his pocket, trying to keep what was there out of sight. He looked down at his bare feet. He never wore shoes in the canoe.
    “I do believe you’re blushing,” said his mother.
    “I am not blushing,” he said.
    “Yes, you are. Why, maybe I
should
get that old canoe down from the shed and follow you one of these days. See what kind of trouble you’re getting into.” He looked out toward the creek. Saw a kingfisher skim the surface. Mavis poked him in the ribs. “I hope whoever she is, you won’t be bashful about bringing her home.”
    “Mom.”
    “Or too proud,” she said, her voice teetering a bit now. It didn’t take much to deflate her.
    Cramer wished there was something he could do to drive her demons away. “I promise
when
there’s a girl, you’ll be the first to know.”
    She gave him a hug. “‘You are my sunshine, my only sunshine,’” she started to sing, her voice muffled in his shirt. She swayed back and forth, trying to lug him around with her on a dance on the uneven shore. He held on to her lest she slip off the bank into the water. Something was up.
    She must have sensed what he was thinking, because she pulled away and held him at arm’s length. She was still smiling to beat the band.
    “You think your mother’s gone cuckoo on you?” she said.
    “No, Mom—”
    “It’s okay, Cramer, honey,” she said, and then she tipped her head back and laughed out loud. “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay!” She looked into his face, her own suddenly composed and sober. “I know how difficult I can be,” she said. “I’m not famous for being levelheaded.”
    “Mom—”
    “And I know that if it weren’t for you, I’d’ve been toast a long time ago.”
    “Ah, Mom, it’s not like—”
    “Shhh! Yes, it is!” she said, gently pounding his chest with her fists. “You really are my knight in shining armor.”
    He swallowed hard, proud and self-conscious.
    Then she smirked and said, “Come on. I want to show you something.”
    The painting stood on the easel, still wet in patches but remarkable in its energy. His mother didn’t speak. She just let him gaze upon her work.
    It was an abstract piece, all in lavenders and ochers and blue-veined greens, so that it looked like a garden seen in a cracked but bright mirror. Cramer didn’t know much about art, but he knew this: the painting before him contained all of the excitement and enthusiasm and sparkly-eyed optimism that his mother had revealed to him down by the stream.
    “It’s so good,” he said.
    “Do you think?”
    “I know!”
    “Oh, honey,” she said. “I do, too. ‘I have found the key to my courage locker,’” she said. He recognized it as a saying from
The Artist’s Path,
and he had to admit it was true. This painting
was
courageous—it seemed to shout at him across the room.
    “Now I know why you’re so happy,” he said. And she squeezed him tightly and pressed her head against his chest as if trying to smother a scream or stop herself from bursting into tears.
    “It’s back,” she whispered. “I am recovered.”
    “I’m so proud of you, Mom,” he said, drinking in her excitement.
    Then she pushed him away again, though she held on to his hands tightly. Unconsciously, he rubbed his thumb along the scar on her left hand. Then he stopped himself, lest it set her off. But she seemed happily oblivious of her painful past. She gazed at the painting, the way he’d seen people in movies gaze through the window at a baby in a maternity room. Then she looked up into his eyes. “There’s more where that comes from,” she said confidently. “I mean it.”
    “That’s good news,” he said.
    She turned around to give the painting her complete attention. “We’ll be rich again,” she said, and laughed because they had never been rich, but they had once been happy, for a while.
    “I know it,” he said.
    “There’s just one thing,” she