A Creed in Stone Creek by Linda Lael Miller Read Free Book Online

herself.
    It is a living thing, and it is thirsty, that self retorted silently.
    With a sigh, Melissa put down her purse, searched until she found the empty coffee tin Andrea used as a watering can—when she remembered to water the indoor foliage, which was a crapshoot—filled the humble vessel at the sink in the women’s restroom, returned to the cubicle and carefully doused the ivy.
    It seemed to rally, right before her eyes, that bedraggled snippet of greenery, standing up a little straighter, stretching its fragile limbs a bit wider instead of shriveling. Melissa made a mental note to speak to Andrea about the subtleties of responsibility—she wasn’t a bad kid. Just sort of— distracted all the time. And little wonder, given all she’d been through.
    Andrea had arrived in Stone Creek as a runaway, when she was just fourteen, riding the same bus that had probably brought Byron Cahill back to town that very afternoon. Out of money and out of options, she’d spent her first night sleeping behind the potted rosebushes in the garden center at the local discount store.
    Upon discovering her there, first thing the next morning, the clerk had called Tom Parker, a natural thing to do. Especially since Andrea sat cross-legged against the wall, stubbornly refusing to come out.
    Tom had soon arrived, accompanied by his portly mixed-breed retriever, Elvis, who pushed his way right through those spiky-spined rosebushes to lick Andrea’s face in friendly consolation. After a while, Tom—or had it been Elvis?—managed to persuade Andrea to take a chance on the kindness of strangers and leave her erstwhile hiding place.
    Over breakfast at the Lucky Horseshoe Café, since closed, the girl had confided in Tom, told him about her less-than-wholesome home life, down in Phoenix. Her mother was on drugs, she claimed, and her stepfather, who had done time for a variety of crimes, was about to get out of jail. Rather than be at his mercy, Andrea said, she’d decided to take off, try to make it on her own.
    Of course, Tom checked the story out, and it held up to scrutiny, so agencies were consulted and legalsteps were taken, and Andrea moved in with the elderly Crockett sisters, Mamie and Marge, who lived directly across the street from Tom’s aunt Ona, she of Parade-Committee fame, as a foster child. Andrea still lived in the small apartment above the Crocketts’ detached garage, proudly paying rent and looking after the old ladies and their many cats.
    Melissa was thinking all these thoughts as she left the courthouse, head bent, rummaging through her purse for her car keys as she crossed the gravel lot.
    “Did you get my email?”
    The question jolted Melissa and she came to an abrupt halt, her heart scrabbling in her throat.
    “Velda,” Melissa said, when she had regained enough breath to speak. “You scared me.”
    Byron’s mother, probably in her early fifties and emaciated almost to the point of anorexia, stood near the roadster, dappled in the leaf shadows of the oak tree. Velda wore an old cotton blouse without sleeves, plastic flip-flops and jeans so well-worn that the fabric couldn’t have been described as blue, but only as a hint of that color.
    “Sorry,” Velda said, her voice scratchy from several decades of smoking unfiltered cigarettes and half again that much regret, probably, her expression insincere. Lines spiked out around her mouth, giving her lips a pursed look. “I wouldn’t want to do that. Scare anybody, I mean.”
    “Good,” Melissa said, steady enough by then to be annoyed instead of frightened.
    Velda stood between Melissa and the driver’s-side door of the car, her skinny arms folded. Her hair was iron-gray, with faint streaks of yellow, and fell well pasther shoulders. Pink plastic barrettes, shaped like little hearts, held the locks back at the sides of her head, creating an unfortunate effect of attempted girlishness.
    “Did you get my email?” Velda asked again.
    “Yes,” Melissa