Read The Last Will of Moira Leahy for Free Online

maybe a fall in a quick-drop scale.
Poppy applauded when she finished. “You never sounded like that, Abby.” He winked at his daughter.
“No, all my squeaking probably sounded more like …”
“Gooses?” Maeve set down the instrument.
“Yes, Maeve,” Mama said with a smile. “Geese.”
Poppy leaned back in his chair. “I’ve missed the Atlantic,” he said. “I hear you girls can handle the sails yourselves now.”
They nodded in unison, said, “Yes, Poppy.”
“Shall we go sailing tomorrow, bright and early?”
“Ayuh!” Maeve said without even asking Daddy. “We’ll take you to a new spot on the island that has the best jasper ever!”
Moira stayed in Maeve’s room that night, as she always did when Poppy came to visit. They cleared the floor of books and clothes and tapes, and made room for Moira’s sleeping bag.
“You sure you don’t want to stay up here with me?” Maeve peered over the side of her creaky bed to look at her twin.
“No, your bed’s broke.”
“Just broken in, like a baseball glove.”
“Because you jump on it too much. I’ll sleep here.”
“Okay, but you’re missing a good bed.”
Moira read Jane Eyre by moonlight until her eyes hurt, then fell into a fitful sleep as dream pythons squeezed her middle. She woke to her sister’s moan.
“You’re sick,” Moira whispered. “You shouldn’t have had two pieces of pie.”
Maeve groaned again, clasped her stomach.
“Should I get Mama?”
“No, if she finds out, she won’t let me have pie tomorrow. You go back to sleep. I’ll block.”
“Don’t block. It’s not that bad.” Worse than pain’s shadowpart would be feeling cut off from her sister. The effort of blocking would make Maeve extra tired, too.
Moira curled beside her twin, and slept until she felt a tap on her shoulder. Mama, rimmed in faint yellow, stood over them with a question in her eyes. Moira looked at Maeve, whose cheeks were two red splotches in a pale face. She no longer felt an undercurrent of pain but knew from the tight, hollow feeling in her chest that Maeve had blocked after all. It felt, almost, like hunger. “Maeve’s sick,” she explained.
Mama touched Maeve’s forehead, frowned. “Go on down and have some eggs,” she said. “Daddy has to work on Dan Brooks’s windjammer today, but you and Pops go have fun on the boat.” She left, taking wide steps to avoid shuffled piles of room rubble and muttering something about the thermometer.
“Feel better,” Moira whispered, and kissed her sister on the head.
THE SUN HADN’T yet cleared the mist when Moira and Poppy set out twenty minutes later. Moira’s anxiety over Maeve lingered as well, though it unfurled some when the first gust of crisp, salted wind filled their sails. Poppy managed the mainsail and tiller, while Moira kept her hand on the small jib sheet and monitored the wind vane Daddy had put on top of the mast. Always know where the wind is coming from , he’d said. It’s the first lesson for sailors and the most important . Moira watched the wind vane.
“What did the Atlantic Ocean say to the Indian Ocean?” Poppy asked once they’d been sailing awhile.
“What?”
“Can you be more Pacific?”
Moira giggled.
“Do you know what the Indian Ocean said in response?”
“No.”
“Nothing, he just waved.”
She had another fit of laughter and he chuckled along with her, as they adjusted their sails at a change in the wind.
“So tell me how school has been. Do you like your teacher?”
“She’s very nice.” Moira chatted about Mrs. Keeler and her classmates for a while, then adjusted the jib again and stopped to listen to the irregular cadence of rippling sails.
The wind had picked up as they’d sailed farther into the heart of the bay and closer to the mouth of the open sea. Waves had grown larger and the fog thicker, like a blanket over the whole of the sky, a clot over the sun. Moira shivered. She could see no landmarks. Hear no other sailors.
“Poppy, should we should