Crystal Lies by Melody Carlson Read Free Book Online

tomorrow.”
    “Lucky kid,” said the guy as he totaled my purchase. I handed himmy Visa card, then wondered how long I would have this little luxury of giving someone plastic and getting merchandise in return. And even as he ran the card through his machine, a chill ran down my spine. What if it didn’t work? What if Geoffrey had already figured it out—that I had left him. What if he had canceled all my credit cards? Closed my checking and savings accounts?
    “You okay, ma’am?” asked the kid.
    I nodded. “Just tired,” I told him. “So much to do.”
    “Yeah,” he agreed, handing me my receipt to sign. “There’s a lot of work involved in a campout.”
    I signed the paper and sighed. “That’s the truth.”
    “Tell your son to have fun.”
    I made a pathetic attempt at a smile and assured him I would. Then, with my purchases heaped in the cart, I hurried out into the summer evening. I wondered where my son would be camping tonight. I knew he was probably better prepared than I, but still I worried. What if this final straw with his father was enough to push him right over the edge? What if Jacob used being kicked out of his home as an excuse to do something, well, something foolish? Or at least more foolish than what he’d already been doing? In the past I had prayed for Jacob during times like this, but more and more I felt that my prayers were like stones hurled toward heaven, but then gravity pulled those stones back down and heaped them upon me until I was buried alive in their rubble.
    “Stock up while you can,” I told myself as I drove through the quiet streets. “Once Geoffrey finds out you’ve left him, you will have nothing.” And so I parked in front of the slightly sleazy all-night grocery store called More-4-Less. My cart limped with a jittery front wheel that made so much noise I was certain the whole store could hear me as I piled it high with staples. I couldn’t imagine that I would ever actually cook or eat these things, but I proceeded to load my cart with cans of soup, boxes of pasta,and even several packages of rice pilaf. I suppose I felt the need to be prepared just in case Jacob should show up hungry and desperate. In a survivalist mode, I rattled down aisle after aisle until I was so exhausted it seemed I was walking through a dream, grasping at canned beans as if they were portals back to my old life.
    To my relief, the bored-looking thirty-something woman at the checkout stand hardly glanced at me as she mechanically pushed item after item through the electronic eye, which worked only about half of the time, and the rest of the time she scanned it with a little hand-held thing. But like a zombie, I just stood there and stared at her, wondering how she managed to live like this, working in a smelly grocery store in the middle of the night. Her nametag said Sylvia, but nothing else. Did she, like me, have a crummy little apartment to go home to? Children? A husband? A dog?
    “Did you know that this is self-service?” she asked me with frown creases carved into her pale forehead.
    I blinked. “What do you mean?”
    “I mean you have to bag your own stuff.” Sylvia nodded toward the end of the counter.
    With wide eyes I looked at the enormous pile of items and wondered where it had all come from and how it had accumulated into this giant mountain of
stuff
“Oh,” I muttered, as if this wasn’t such a huge challenge. But the truth was, I wanted to bolt just then. I wanted to turn away from this rude woman, whose drab brown roots needed a serious touch-up to match her brassy blond bleach job, and I wanted to dash out of that run-down grocery store and leap into my car and drive far, far away. This was nothing like the organic gourmet grocery where Geoffrey preferred that we shop.
    “The sacks are down there.” She gave her thumb a downward jerk to point to some holders where piles of brown paper bags were nested.
    I pulled out a bag and struggled to open it, shaking it