Read The Memory Thief for Free Online Page A

as her. Why do you?”
    Hannah remembered all the books she had received as presents from her father. And all of the knitting supplies he gave Bethie.
    “You toured that college with us last spring. You said you liked it.”
    “Not as much as I’d love to plan your wedding and help you organize your own household. Think of it, your
own
household. At eighteen you could have that. There are plenty of good young men at our church. Did you know John Hadley asked
     to court you last spring? Your father said no, that you were too young. I didn’t agree, but it wasn’t my place to say. You
     are older now; you could have more of a say in these matters. And of course, Father and I would take the money we would have
     spent on college and help you get started in your new life. Think of all the lovely new furniture. A nice house of your own.
     And Hannah,” she said, smiling triumphantly, “think of all the pretty new dishes.”
    It was vanity. The only one that her parents turned a blind eye to. Even indulged. It began with the porcelain tea set she
     and Bethie received when they were four. Tiny cups and saucers with pink rosebuds painted across them, the perfect size to
     fit little doll hands. Bethie was pleased with them and played with them like any child. A fifteen-minute game of pretend
     before moving on to something new. But not Hannah. She would spend whole days arranging those dishes on their little art table,
     a pink pillowcase thrown over it for a tablecloth. Each year after that, her parents bought her a new set. They’d pack away
     the old one, wrapping up pink rosebud saucers in layers of cloth. “We’ll save these for your own daughter one day,” Mother would say.
    Then Hannah would open a new one. She would sit with delicate china cups in her hands and stare at the paintings on them.
     Garlands of rainbow pansies. Little English cottages nestled by foamy waterfalls. Or beautiful little girls, with braids and
     ribbons and curled eyelashes. She’d hold the dishes up, and the light would pour through and make the paintings glow. Make
     their beauty shine down on her.
    “Hannah”—Mother laughed softly, that day on the beach—“do you think I didn’t notice the way you held the cups to your lips
     as you stared in the mirror? Children never hide things as well as they think.”
    Bethie laughed. She looked at Hannah and signed the letter
T
. Hannah laughed, too. They shared a T-shirt secret that made Bethie feel more like her sister than the polyester ever had.
    “You still wonder, don’t you?” Mother asked. “You wonder whether you are pretty, more than you think of goodness.”
    “No. If there is any beauty here,” Hannah said, looking down upon herself, “it’s well hidden.”
    “That’s the point. Or else you end up like Leah.”
    Aunt Leah was the family scandal, with two divorces by the time she was thirty. Years ago, Hannah found a picture of Leah,
     taken in the parking lot of a church after a family funeral. Hannah stared at the red face, the swollen eyes. “That’s Leah,”
     Mother explained. “We barely knew our great-uncle. She cried like a baby that day, though. Always did like to make a scene.”
     Hannah stared in awe at that woman in black pants, the kind that made a woman look so slim. And at her deep red turtleneck,
     a perfect match to the shade of her lipstick.
    All through her childhood, Hannah had stumbled into hushed conversations. “Looks just like Leah,” she’d hear relatives whisper,
     when they thought Hannah couldn’t hear. “Their hair so blond it doesn’t look real.”
    Sometimes at night, when Hannah couldn’t sleep, she would close her eyes and think of Leah and her red lips. Leah with her
     black pants and slim curves. She pretended that picture of Leah answered her heart’s question. Of who she might be, what she
     might look like, if she had only been born to the Presbyterian family across the street.
    “Leah was always set on being pretty,”