The Dark Closet Read Online Free

The Dark Closet
Book: The Dark Closet Read Online Free
Author: Miranda Beall
Pages:
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driveway on one side and inspecting the fields on the other were at least knee-high in snow themselves.
    The road was a  miserable disappointment, for Crossett anyway. A monstrous drift rose before him at the very entrance to the mile and a half driveway, with one stone pillar completely buried. The children, on the other hand, frolicked and reveled in the novelty of being allowed to play in the road. If Anne were there, she would have had a fit, even though no cars would be coming down Green Spring Road today or tomorrow or the day after or the day after that. As far as he could see, one drift after another, each as tall as a man, rose and fell like a roller coaster along the road.
    “Tw o weeks,” Crossett muttered to himself as he put his hands on his hips. Then he reached out and pulled Warenne back. “Your sister almost suffocated in the snow. Don’t fall into it like that.” His dictatorial tone always frightened his children, and he rarely gave reasons for his edicts.
    “Come on,” he called abruptly as he headed back up the driveway along the trail already blazed. Halfway back to the house, he knocked the snow off the fence in a spot it had not drifted and stooped to bend beneath the top and second rails to climb into the field. Braden squirmed over the top rail until he fell in a lump on the other side; Warenne got stuck trying to crawl through the second and third rails; Maude followed her father’s example; and Sofie whimpered until Crossett came to haul her over the top himself. Across the field they trooped, cutting a zigzag through the snow as they avoided the drifts. Beneath the arthritic, snowy clutch of an oak that grew on his side but reached its cyclopean, gnarled hands over to Crossett’s side was Twynne with his three children, May, Editha, and Thomas.
    “Two weeks, minimum, Twynne,” Crossett said breathlessly as he approached the fence.
    “I think you’re right,” he replied as he shook Crossett’s hand. “How are you?”
    “Oh, fine. Living in the basement,” he said with whitened breath in the fifteen-degree air. “Cramped.”
    “How do you do, Mr. Forster?” Crossett’s four children rang out as the stepped forward one by one to shake hands.
    “How do you do, Mr. Mainwaring?” Twynne’ s three children chimed as they leaned over the fence to shake Crossett’s hand.
    He and Twynne always met like this after snow or rain storms that knocked out the electricity and telephone or rendered the roads impassable. It was their emergency communication system: meet at eleven o’clock a.m. the first day after  precipitation ceased, exchange information, make sure everyone was safe and well, make swift decisions if everyone was not. They had a series of alternative plans if there were any injuries or sickness: herd both families under one roof; send one father and son by horse (Twynne had three) for help at the nearest neighboring farm; send one father by horse to Barrow for the doctor if need be; if possible, send the patient as well. Crossett was not much of a rider, although he belonged to the Barrow Hunt Club, mainly because anyone who was anyone in Barrow was in the Barrow Hunt Club. It was not with approval that the powers of the Barrow Hunt Club met with Crossett’s lukewarm attitude toward riding, but Mainwaring was a prominent name in the Barrow countryside and at the Barrrow tobacco warehouses. Crossett did in fact own a stable, albeit it had not seen a horse in two generations. Its existence, however, mollified the Membership Committee of Barrow Hunt Club. Crossett’s willingness to host the opening hunt breakfast did nothing to hurt his case as well.
    “How are you?” Crossett continued his conversation with Twynne.
    “Can we play with May , Editha, and Thomas?” Braden interrupted. His father threw him a chilly glance.
    “Surviving the storm of the century?” Crossett went on, ignoring Braden’s request.
    Twynne laughed and shook his head. “We’ve got no heat
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