A Scrying Shame by Donna White Glaser Read Free Book Online

throw water from the pitcher on it. I guess this means PB and J for supper again. Lordy.
    Flash.
    Dang this wind. The sheet flaps against my whole body, twisting me up like a mummy. My arms ache from wrestling to get these stupid linens on the line, and the clothespin keeps slipping from my lips. But it’s gonna smell so good tonight. Tonight, when Bennie holds me—
    Arie pulled out of the vision right before Grady walked back in. She coughed to cover the lingering smile, but he didn’t notice this time.
    “Almost done?” he asked.
    “Yep. How’s it look?”
    Grady peered at the floor. There was still a dark spot, but the kitchen hadn’t been remodeled in twenty years—one dark spot among a multitude of coffee spills and grease stains. Agnes had been a good cook once she’d learned to use the oven timer.
    Arie’s grandfather had worked most of his adult life as a member of the most hated profession ever created. Being an IRS auditor had suited him. Unlike Agnes Weaver, his personal life hadn’t. All her life, an aura of mystery had surrounded any mention of her grandma. From the little bits that Arie had unearthed, she knew Lily Wilston had stayed in the marriage just long enough to produce a daughter for her chronically cranky, perfectionist husband, and then had abruptly vanished.
    After living all those years on his own, Grumpa wasn’t any more eager for the transition than his granddaughter. In fact, he had refused to discuss the possibility for nearly two weeks. He had even hung tight in the face of his daughter’s thinly disguised threat of sending him to a retirement community. When, in seeming retreat, she’d shifted tactics and given her father a choice between his granddaughter moving in or “hiring a nice, respectable lady from Happy Helping Hands,” he too had given in to the inevitable.
    Moving everything Arie held dear really only took one afternoon. As pastor of the smaller of the town’s two Baptist churches, her father had plenty of resources to tap into. For the cost of a half-dozen pizzas, the youth group had shown up en masse to transfer Arie’s things from her apartment to Grumpa’s house. The adolescents cheerfully hauled boxes, garbage bags, and a couple of suitcases through Grumpa’s sunken living room and then down the hall to the former guest room. A few paused to remark favorably on the retro look of the furnishings. The sunken living room with the red brick fireplace received the highest raves.
    While Arie didn’t mind the decor—in fact, she agreed it was kind of funky—she hated the plastic-covered couch and the plastic runners that had been laid down on the high-traffic areas of the carpet. The couch made the backs of her legs itch, and she knew from childhood that if she tried to lie down, she’d end up with a pool of sweat puddled under her cheek.
    Ignoring Evelyn’s frantic efforts to keep them organized, the laughing, hyper teens poured around the adults like frothy water in a babbling brook. Grumpa grumbled loudly about the invasion and scolded any who stepped off the plastic runways.
    Arie decided staying out of the way was the best choice, and she made for the front door. Sneaking out, she hid around the corner of the garage, where she pretended to supervise the unpacking process.
    Instead, she called Chandra. “Where are you?”
    “Calm down,” Chandra said in a voice dripping with patience. “I told you I wouldn’t be there ’til after lunch. Any pizza left?”
    “Are you kidding? These kids are like a hoard of locusts. They swarmed the pizza delivery guy while he was still in the driveway. The boxes never even made it to the kitchen table. I didn’t even get to smell the pizza.” Arie’s stomach rumbled.
    She peeked around the corner of the house. “I can’t believe I’m doing this. I forgot all about the pink bathroom. Did I tell you about that? It looks like a flamingo experienced epic amounts of intestinal discomfort in there. The whole room is