All the Way Home by Wendy Corsi Staub Read Free Book Online

the baby in late July or August, and it will be at least another year before she’ll feel like she can leave Ozzie and the new little guy in day care or with a full-time sitter. There are too many crazies out there; it’s just too hard to find someone you can trust with your children these days.
    Michelle feels a pang of loss, thinking about her mother, who died only months before Ozzie was born. Mom had lived right here in town, and she would have loved spending her retirement years taking care of her grandchildren.
    Lou’s mother, on the other hand, isn’t the grandmotherly type. Iris is too busy with her garden club and bridge club and God knows what else, and, besides, her winters in Clearwater Beach keep getting longer and longer.
    No, Michelle can’t count on her to help out.
    Of course, there’s Molly. She’s terrific with Ozzie. But she’s just a kid herself. Michelle doesn’t like to leave her alone with Ozzie at night if she can help it. The few times she has, Molly has seemed nervous about it. And just the other night, she asked Michelle if she thought the house was really haunted.
    Michelle would rather not think about that possibility. She’s a grown woman, and when they bought the place, she and Lou laughed off the rumors that the house was haunted by the ghost of Emily Anghardt, the young girl who disappeared from here and presumably was murdered. But the past few nights, with Lou working late at the office, she’s found herself spooked about being alone here.
    Must be the pregnancy. She’s feeling vulnerable in a lot of ways lately.
    Drying Ozzie’s hands, she says, “How about if we go downstairs for a snack?”
    “Snack? Yes, snack. Yummy!” he replies eagerly, and makes a beeline for the door.
    “Wait for Mommy,” she calls, hurrying to catch up. She presses one hand into her aching lower back and uses the other to wipe a trickle of sweat from her forehead. The temperature is already steamy, and the sun has only been up a few hours. Weather like this is unusual in the foothills of the Adirondacks, even in late June.
    “What should we have, Ozzie?” Michelle asks her son in the kitchen, surveying the contents of the cupboard. She really needs to get to the supermarket later. Things are looking pretty bare, and she just got groceries a few days ago.
    “Ice cream,” Ozzie says firmly, his eyes lighting up at the prospect of his favorite treat.
    “It’s too early for ice cream,” Michelle tells him. “How about a couple of crackers and peanut butter?”
    She takes out a box of saltines, thinking they’ll settle her stomach. Nothing like having morning sickness the whole nine months, she thinks grimly. She reaches into the nearly empty inner waxed paper bag and pulls out a couple of crackers.
    “No. Ice cream,” Ozzie insists.
    The saltines taste unpleasantly dry in this heat and Michelle eats only one, putting the rest back into the bag.
    “Okay,” she says, returning the box to the cupboard. “It’s got to be ninety degrees out. Ice cream it is, Ozzie.”
    M olly nudges Rebecca’s arm and tilts her head in the direction of two boys coming out of the bait and tackle shop across from the park bench where they’re sitting.
    “Look. There’s Ryan Baker,” she says.
    “Oh, gee, Molly, is he why we’re sitting here instead of at the library?” Rebecca’s serious gray eyes look dismayed behind her owlish glasses, and she flips her long, slightly frizzy dark hair over her shoulders impatiently.
    “Relax. The library doesn’t open until ten.”
    “It’s ten-fifteen.”
    “Oh. Well, don’t be ridiculous. How would I know he was going to be here?” Molly asks, watching as Ryan and his friend Andy Chase get on their bikes, balancing fishing poles over their shoulders.
    “Maybe you overheard Jessica telling Amanda yesterday that Ryan couldn’t go with her to the mall today because he and Andy were going fishing at the park after they finish their paper routes,” Rebecca