Breathe
Page 18
She glanced out the window. Boats were still searching the sea for Undine as the day’s light grew long. She wondered when they would give up and go home. Absently she picked up Undine’s jeans from the floor and folded them, smoothing out the creases.
“Louise.”
She turned. Prospero stood in the doorway, and though to Lou he had always seemed old, now she really saw his age, as though he was bruised black and blue with it.
“She’s gone,” said Lou. “She’s really gone.”
“She’s not gone far,” said Prospero.
“Do you really believe that? You think…you think this is magic? What makes you think she’s not somewhere at the bottom of the sea just…ordinarily…gone?”
“Because I’d know,” said Prospero. “And so would you.”
“That’s what I tell myself,” Lou admitted. “That if she was really dead”—Lou shuddered—“I would feel it. But it’s been so long since I let the magic in, maybe I…”
Prospero said, “You would know, Louise. It’s Undine. She’s our daughter. She’s us: she’s made from us, from our bodies and blood and from our history and our magic. We would know.”
“Then where is she?”
“I don’t know.” Prospero shook his head. “But she will find her way home. I just hope…” Prospero faltered.
“Does she know? About you, I mean?” Lou asked.
He looked away.
“You haven’t told her,” Lou said quietly.
He shook his head. “I thought there was time. I thought it was mine running out, not hers.” He looked at Lou. “I’m sorry I rang you that night, if it was a burden to you. And perhaps you were right, perhaps I should have been honest from the beginning. But I wanted her memories of Greece to be happy, not tainted by grief for a dying father.”
Lou watched out the window as the first boats were beginning to return to the pier.
“If she’d known,” Lou said quietly, but without accusation, “perhaps she would still be here.”
“She’ll find her way home,” Prospero said again, quietly. “I know she will.”
Trout sat halfway up the steps in the early morning light. The sun was sweet as warmed honey. A crowd of daffodils at his front door nodded cordially to one another.
He closed his eyes and saw in his mind the image of Undine leaving, as though there existed just beyond his reach an infinite moment of leaving. Was there hesitation on her face, as though this time she just might stay?
“Good-bye, Undine,” he said, and he could almost taste her on his mouth. He smiled, as only the air and the sky and the passing of birds answered him. “Undine, good-bye.”
EPILOGUE
And then there is…
Darkness.
And the smell of bacon cooking. She opens her eyes. She’s starving.
As if in a dream, she rises from her bed in the attic room of the house on the steps and walks down the stairs in search of breakfast.
She runs her fingers along the wall as she descends. It feels real; the friction of the porous surface of the plaster against her fingertips creates heat on her skin.
Jasper is sitting at the table, drawing. He grins as she approaches. She sees through Lou’s open doorway that Lou is still in bed reading the paper.
“Morning!” Lou calls out.
“Morning,” Undine falters. She can still smell bacon cooking, hear it crackling in the pan, and in the kitchen someone clutters china cups. She almost knows who it is, but she doesn’t let herself believe it.
“Hi, chicken,” he greets her. “How do you want your eggs?”
For a moment she can’t breathe. She stands frozen to the spot, and then she is falling, falling through the air to get to him.
“Stephen.” She is soaking the front of his shirt with tears. “Stephen.” She pulls back to look at his face and he looks into hers. “It’s you. It’s really you!”
“Well,” he says, baffled. “It’s nice to see you, too.” And he holds her as long as she needs him to, while the bacon burns and the eggs shrivel and Lou and Jasper look on in bewilderment, and the day outside whirs into life with all the promise and newness of early spring.
About the Author
PENNI RUSSON’S first novel, Undine, was named a Notable Book of the Year by the Children’s Book Council of Australia. Ms. Russon grew up in a bush suburb of Hobart, where there was snow in winter and bushfires in summer. She now lives in Melbourne with her young family, and every winter she dreams of snow.
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Credits
Jacket art © 2007 by Chad W. Beckerman
Jacket design by Chad W. Beckerman
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
BREATHE. Copyright © 2005 by Penni Russon. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub © Edition JANUARY 2009 ISBN: 9780061975349
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