206 BONES by Kathy Reichs Read Free Book Online

plans.”
     
“I suppose I could try for a rental car.” Insincere.
     
Dear God. I couldn’t take Ryan where I was going.
     
“Could be nasty, what with this weather, and me unfamiliar with the city,” Ryan went on.
     
“Agencies provide maps. Or you can ask for something with GPS.”
     
No go at Hertz or Avis.
     
I couldn’t believe this was happening. Could the day get worse?
     
I thought of the evening ahead.
     
A lot worse, I realized.
     
“All right,” I said as Ryan requested the number at Budget. “You can have my car. But you’ll have to drive me to the burbs.”
     
“Sounds workable. Surely motels that far out will have vacancy.”
     
“Surely.”
     
That’s not how it went.
     
     
     
     
     
     

6
     
     
EVEN IN GONZO TRAFFIC, THE DRIVE FROM GREEKTOWN TO Elmhurst should take less than an hour. That afternoon it took two and a half.
     
By the time I reached St. Charles Road, the dashboard clock said six forty. Great. I’d given an ETA of four. Everyone would be there. If Ryan was spotted, my arrival would turn into a circus.
     
Sound melodramatic? Trust me. I know the crowd.
     
Ryan understood a little about my colorful in-laws. While driving, I’d given him the the current saga. I’d missed Thanksgiving, and would compound that felony at Christmas by taking Katy to Belize to scuba-dive instead of to Chicago to hang stockings by the fire. Thus, I was spending a couple of days with the Petersons tribe.
     
“Your former in-laws?”
     
“Mm.”
     
Though we’d lived apart for years, my ex and I weren’t technically exes. We’d never legally divorced. But that would soon change. Recently, fiftysomething Pete had slipped a diamond onto the finger of twenty-something Summer. Needless to say, Old Pete had also opted out of turkey this year.
     
“Your mother-in-law is making supper?”
     
“You just ate, Ryan.”
     
“You rave about her cooking.”
     
“She’ll have a houseful.”
     
“Aunt Klara and Uncle Juris?”
     
Over the years, I’d shared tales of Pete’s alarmingly close and remarkably extended Latvian family. The annual beach trip, Easter egg–coloring contest, and Yuletide caroling to the Brookfield Zoo bears. The mandatory appearances at christenings, graduations, weddings, and funerals. The telephone network that makes the national disaster alarm system look like child’s play. Apparently, Ryan remembered key player names.
     
Here’s the story. Following World War II and the subsequent Soviet occupation of the Baltics, Pete’s grandmother, her sons, and their wives decided it was best to seek greener pastures. According to family lore, the departure from Riga involved a dead-of-night dash and a harrowing voyage on a sketchy cargo ship.
     
Next came an extended heel-cooling period in “displaced persons” compounds, known as DP camps, up and down the German countryside. Undaunted by the long wait, the couples used their time to be fruitful and multiply. Madara and Vilis produced Janis, our very own “Pete,” and his sister, Regina. Klara and Juris produced Emilija and Ludis.
     
After eight long years, a Latvian church in Chicago finally stepped up to the plate. In agreeing to sponsor the brave little band, the pastor and his flock guaranteed employment, housing, and a linguistically intelligible support network in the Windy City.
     
Upon their arrival, the family lived in an abandoned store. Not much, but it was home.
     
Working two jobs each, the brothers eventually managed to copur-chase a wreck of a place in Elmhurst, a suburb close to the factories, the college, and the Latvian church. More important perhaps, Elmhurst’s grand old trees reminded Omamma of her lost home far across the sea.
     
The house was a rambling frame affair with enough bedrooms to accommodate the whole ragtag clan. But that isn’t family, American-style. In the U.S. we go to nuclear units, Ward, June, Wally, and the Beav.
     
A few more years and the brothers held separate mortgages. Pete and his parents and sister