If Onions Could Spring Leeks Read Free

and flawless and she had high, delicate cheeks. Her nose was button, but for some reason it fit well with her grown-up features. The sadness in her brown eyes was so palpable that when they pooled with tears my heart ached sympathetically.
    â€œI’m so sorry,” I said quietly.
    She looked at me, blinked back the tears and then opened her eyes wide. “Oh my, dear, where are your clothes? Here, let me give you my coat.” She made a move to unbutton the thin outer layer that looked like it was part of her dress.
    â€œOh,” I said as I looked at myself. “No, I’m fine, thank you anyway. You can hear me? See me?”
    â€œOf course, silly thing, but what are you doing without so much as some good underpinnings on?”
    As she continued to unbutton, the scene changed again. Suddenly, it was just she and I on the platform. The steam engine remained and puttered in the background. All the other ghosts disappeared.
    She looked up and around and then at me. “Gracious, thisis odd. Where did everyone go?” She stopped unbuttoning and took a large step toward the locomotive. Her fingers moved to a simple chain around her neck.
    â€œUh . . . I’m Betts, Isabelle Winston,” I said as I stepped next to her. “This is all strange because it’s not part of what is happening in present time. My grandmother is Missouri Anna Winston. Perhaps you know her?”
    She looked at me and blinked. “I do not know your grandmother and I don’t quite understand what you mean. At all.”
    Since the ghosts’ memories were sometimes scrambled when they first arrived, it could take time for them to acclimate, but if this was this ghost’s first visit it would also be my first visit without Gram to help me through the introductions. I thought about one of our previous experiences.
    â€œMay I ask your name?” I said.
    â€œGrace,” she said absently as she searched the platform.
    â€œWell, Grace, this is bound to be strange, but you are currently visiting the twenty-first century. This scene,” I waved my arm, “is something from the past.” I swallowed hard before I said the next part because it seemed so cruel, but Gram had told me that there was no need to be delicate. The ghosts’ realization that they were no longer a part of the living world couldn’t possibly harm them, and the sooner they knew the truth the better it was for them, and for her and me.
    â€œCan you tell me what you think the date is?” I said.
    â€œOf course. It’s August 16, 1888.”
    â€œActually, it isn’t. You died long ago, Grace. You’re just back visiting Broken Rope, a long time after you lived. My Gram and I are the only ones you will be able to communicate with.”
    â€œI don’t understand. I’m in Broken Rope?”
    I was surprised that this was the most curious part of what I’d just told her, but I said, “Yes.”
    â€œI made it then, I made it,” she said as she stepped back, turned and looked around. “Is he here?”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œRobert. Is he here?” She continued to search.
    â€œI don’t see anyone else around,” I said. “There were other people here a few minutes ago, but I don’t know who Robert is.”
    â€œOh, oh no. This isn’t right,” she said.
    â€œWhat isn’t right?”
    â€œThis is not the Broken Rope station,” she said.
    I felt words of protest rise in my throat—how could this be another station? We were in Broken Rope. But then I realized she might be right. I stepped away from the building and looked around. I thought about the pictures Jake had shown me, and though the people in their interesting clothing and the oily black locomotive were parts of what I had seen, the station building I was currently looking at was not. In the pictures, the building had been diminished, a part of the backdrop, but I knew