Dad Hears My Thoughts novel · Chapter 32 of 32

Chapter 32: The Christening Cup

I held my breath and listened.

The stove ticked below us. Snow slid off the hatch.

Inside my head there was nothing at all.

No milk. No goat. No Cici.

"I can't either," I said.

We went down the ladder so fast I missed the last two rungs.

Out the back door barefoot, across the frozen yard, through the gap in the fence the widow's boys had made years ago.

The bakery kitchen was hot and bright, and the first loaves were already in.

The aunt sat by the oven in her shawl with Tuppence on her knee.

Tuppence was wide awake, pink and furious, banging a wooden spoon on the table.

"Ba!" she shouted. "Ba ba ba. Da!"

She was fine. She was perfectly, loudly fine.

Tristram crossed the kitchen and took her up under the arms and held her in front of his face.

"Say something," he said. "Tell me something. Anything."

She looked at him with her big blue eyes.

Then she grabbed his nose.

Nothing came. Not a word, not a color.

He stood there with her fist on his nose and his face falling slowly to pieces.

"Cicely," he said. "What if..."

I knew what he meant.

I took Tuppence's warm fist off his nose and pressed it into his palm.

"Don't you dare," I said. "Don't you even think it. You'd go in the river this minute and you know it."

"Then why can't I hear her?"

The aunt was looking at us both. Her hands had gone still on her shawl.

"You heard her," she said slowly. "In your heads. Didn't you."

Nobody answered.

The widow put down her peel.

"Both of you," the aunt said.

Tristram looked at me, and I nodded.

The aunt put her hand over her mouth.

"Mother heard my sister," she said. "When she was a baby."

"Mother told me when I was grown, and I thought it was a story to make me jealous."

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