My Sweet Audrina [antikvár]

Whitefern There was something strange about the house where I grew up. There were shadows in every corner and whispers on the stairs and time was as irrelevant as honesty. Though how I knew that I couldn't say. There was a war going on in our house. A silent war that sounded no guns, and the bodies that fell were only wishes that died and the bullets were only words and the blood that spilled was always called pride. Though I'd never been to school - and I was seven years old and it was high time I was at school - it seemed I knew all about the Civil War. Around us the Civil War was still being waged, and though the future might stretch ahead for billions of years, it was still the war we'd never forget, for our pride had been injured, and our passions were lingering on. We'd lost the battle better won by the opposite side. Maybe that's why it still kept hurting. Momma and my aunt Ellsbeth always said that men liked violent discussions about wars better than any other topic, but if there were other wars of any importance at all, they were never discussed in our house. Papa would read any book, see any movie, cut out any magazine photo that represented that war between brothers, even though his ancestors had fought against my maternal ones. He was Yankee bom, but a Southerner by preference. At the dinner table he'd recount the plots of the long novels he read about General Robert E. Lee, and give grisly accounts of all the bloody battles. And if most of what he read charmed me, it did not charm either my aunt, who preferred the television, or my mother, who preferred to read her own books, claiming Papa left out the best parts that weren't fit for young ears to hear. That meant my ears, and my cousin Vera's ears. Though