Keeping Secrets Read Free Page B

finery for every season of the year. In winter, icicles glisten from under the eaves and green wreaths appear on red doors. In spring, the trees are tinged with a breathtaking pale green, the exact shade as young grasshoppers. In summer, hydrangeas puff out, fat as cotton candy, lavender and blue and white. And in autumn, Main Street is lined with grinning orange jack-o’-lanterns, and Mr. Freedly comes by to fasten sheaves of bristling cornstalks to the lampposts.
    If you were to walk down Main Street on an afternoon in early October, you would see signs of autumn and Halloween and Thanksgiving on the sidewalks and in the stores and even on some of the people who pass by. There’s Alyssa Morris, a proud kindergartner, walking hand in hand with her mother. On her head, Alyssa wears a paper crown decorated with ghosts and black cats that she made with her beloved art teacher at Camden Falls Elementary earlier today.
    Peek in the shop windows and you’ll see candy corn and strings of pumpkin lights and mechanical monsters (one of which terrified Alyssa last autumn, but she won’t fall for that now). In the window of Sincerely Yours, the shop owned by Olivia’s family, is a tray of candy apple witches. In the window of Needle and Thread is an array of Halloween costumes (some for dogs), the supplies for which can be purchased inside. The windows of Frank’s Beans, the coffee shop, are draped with orange and brown crepe paper, and in each corner sits a cardboard turkey.
    This is Main Street in Camden Falls at the start of another October. The days are noticeably shorter now, and as Alyssa and her mother pass College Pizza, Mrs. Morris says, “Goodness, it’s starting to get dark. Time to go home.”
    If you were to walk with the Morrises now, you would find that their home is just a few minutes away. At the end of the block, turn left on Dodds Lane, then turn right on Aiken Avenue, and ahead on your left you’ll see the Row Houses. Alyssa has lived in the Row Houses for her entire life, but she’s just five and the Row Houses were built more than one hundred and twenty years before she was born. The huge granite structure is unlike anything else in Camden Falls. The eight three-story homes were once owned by wealthy families with maids and chauffeurs, and are now owned by a variety of families, some with children, some with pets, some with children and pets, but absolutely no one with a maid or a chauffeur.
    Darkness is falling fast now, and Alyssa and her mother hurry into their house. Lights are blinking on in the Row Houses and in windows up and down Aiken Avenue and beyond. Behind the windows, in rooms of all sizes and colors and shapes, the people of Camden Falls are living their lives. When the Morrises enter their home, Mrs. Morris turns on the lights in the living room and then the ones in the kitchen. The three older Morris children are at after-school activities and Mr. Morris is still at work. “Come help me fix dinner,” Mrs. Morris says to Alyssa, and Alyssa carefully removes her crown. She wants it to stay fresh and clean, since she plans to keep it her entire life.
    Next door to the Morrises, the Willets’ old house sits in darkness, awaiting its new owners. In the house next to that, the Malones’, one window on the second floor glows softly. Behind this window sits Margaret Malone, busily working away at her college applications and wondering where her younger sister is. Lydia has been grounded by Dr. Malone and was supposed to come home directly after school.
    On the other side of the Malones’ house is the one belonging to Min, Flora, and Ruby. In this house, lights are on everywhere. Min is still working at Needle and Thread, but Ruby and Flora are at home, and Ruby turned on the light in the kitchen when she got a snack, and then the light in the living room when she was looking for her socks, and then the light in the dining room when she stooped