The Invisible Hour by Alice Hoffman EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Authors: Alice Hoffman
- Language: English
- Genre: Occult Horror
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 6 MB
- Price: Free
ACOSS THE UNIVESE
Ivy Jacob came from Boston, and had lived her whole life on Beacon Hill, but
whenever she was asked where she grew up, she would say, West of the moon. She
laughed when she gave out that fairy-tale locale that had never existed in this
world or any other, but anyone could tell from the look in her eyes how deeply
she wished it were true.
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She had always felt like an outsider in Louisburg Square,
an exclusive enclave of Greek Revival houses surrounding a small park and
garden, all privately owned by the elite families in the city. Neighbors didn’t
necessarily speak to each other, but they respected one another, and they
followed the rules. The other girls on the hill wore pleated skirts and blouses
with Peter Pan collars, they did as they were told, and when they graduated from
the Birch School, they went to Wellesley or Mount Holyoke. Ivy was dierent.
She did as she pleased. Her parents didn’t appreciate the way she sulked, or how
she shamed herself with her short skirts, treating her beauty as if it were a curse,
chopping o her hair one year and dying it blue another, storming out of the
room whenever her parents tried to talk sense into her. All the same, she was an
intelligent girl, and had always been a great reader, spending hours at the Boston
Athenaeum; but despite her love of books, she ignored her schoolwork and was
failing her classes, bored to death by her lessons. She loved Thoreau for his
rebellious thoughts, and the Brontës for their dark and tragic tales of love, and
Toni Morrison, whose novels made her cry and feel as if she didn’t know the rst
thing about life.
What few treasures she had were stored in a small jewelry box she’d been
given when she was a child. When the lid was opened, a dancer spun in a circle.
Inside there were little more than trinkets, silver bangle bracelets, a ticket stub
from a concert she’d gone to when her parents were away vacationing, the key to
their maid Helen Connelly’s house. Helen, who’d never had children and always
regretted that decision, saw the family close-up, and she knew how unhappy Ivy
was. She’d been with the Jacob family ever since Ivy was a toddler and thought of
the girl as her own, even though she wasn’t. If she had been, Ivy would have been
pulled out of that private school, where she was so clearly failing; she’d know she
was loved.
“For emergencies,” Helen had said when she gave Ivy the key. “If you ever
need me.”
Ivy had thrown her arms around Helen to thank her. “Every day is an
emergency,” Ivy had whispered, and although she had smiled, it didn’t feel like a
joke.
“Don’t forget,” Helen had told the girl. “Day or night. I’m here.”
Ivy was a true beauty, with black hair and gray eyes, but as she grew older, she
became more unmanageable, at least in her parents’ opinion. By the time she was
sixteen her mother considered Ivy to be the bane of her existence. When she was
a senior in high school, her grades were abysmal,
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