The Ever Breath Read Free

hat, sizing them up with her one visible eye. The house looming at her back looked even worse up close—more pocked and dinged by golf balls, more slouched and weathered. “I’m not used to children,” she said.
    “That’s okay,” Camille said. “We’re not used to old people.”
    Truman winced. Camille had a way of saying the wrong thing. She was too blunt. But their grandmother gave an appreciative nod, as if she liked this answer. “Let me take you for a tour,” she said, digging her walking stick into the ground and heading across the yard.
    Camille followed her. But Truman wanted to run back toward the fairway to catch up with his mother, tell her that this was a mistake, that they should stick together as a family now. But he knew that it wouldn’t do any good.
    He started following Camille and their grandmother. He was still pulling his suitcase, which kept tipping over in thegrass. He followed them as quickly as he could, but then let himself glance over his shoulder one last time to see his mother before she left. But she was already gone—a ghostly figure that was lost in the thick fog.
Swallowed
, Truman thought.
Swallowed by the fog
. Maybe he’d been right after all. Maybe Swallow Road wasn’t named after the bird.

CHAPTER THREE
The Tour Begins
    “I don’t like the term
grandmother
. It sounds old, like someone who belongs in a rocker and can only bake pies,” their grandmother said. “Plus, I haven’t been much of a grandmother to you. I haven’t seen you since you were babies, sharing a crib. I looked into your small wobbly eyes. You were so tiny.” She paused as if remembering it all in great detail. “But I’m a stranger to you now. Aren’t I? A stranger more or less. Why don’t you just use my real name? Swelda.” She looked at the two of them. “Try it out,” she said.
    Truman and Camille glanced at each other and then they both said, “Swelda.”
    She waited expectantly, as if they’d said her name to get her attention. “What is it?” she asked.
    “You told us to say your name,” Camille said. “So we did.”
    “Even so, we’ve established that I’m a stranger to you and you to me, and you don’t have a single question?”
    The only question Truman could think of was:
What kind of a name is Swelda?
    Camille looked at the embattled house and around the grounds. She said simply, “If you were stranded on a deserted island with only a piece of flint, what would you do?” This was a typical Camille question these days.
    “I have been stranded almost all my life,” Swelda answered. “This is my deserted island.” She banged her walking stick on the ground. “And you know what I’ve done?”
    “No,” Camille said.
    Swelda lowered her wizened face. “I’ve survived,” she said. “You will too, when the time comes.”
    Truman didn’t know what she’d meant. They’d survive too, when the time came? Survive what? Truman wasn’t good at surviving even picnics. (He’d been carted away from the last one due to a pollen/asthma/collision-with-an-errant-Frisbee fiasco.)
    The three of them walked across the lawn. And then Swelda stopped and waved her walking stick at the golf course. “In this idiotic game of balls and clubs and loudly colored pants, the golfers must get from the seventeenth tee box to the seventeenth hole. Here, they have to go around this house,” she explained loudly. “And they don’t aim well! So don’t be surprised if you wake up in the morning to the sound of golf balls popping off the roof. Louder than acorns, I tell you! I’ve boarded up the windows. Tired of replacing the glass! Golfers tee off at five a.m. I hope you two are early risers!”
    “I’m an early riser,” Camille said. “There’s no use just lying in bed dreaming.”
    “Mmm,” Swelda said, as if Camille had given the correctanswer on a test. “Good.” And then she peered at Truman intently through her single uncovered lens. “What about you?” she