Barefoot by Elin Hilderbrand Read Free Book Online

rotary dial. Its ring was cranky and mechanical: a hammer hitting a bell. The sound made Brenda’s breath catch. Fear seeped into her chest. Brian Delaney, Esquire, had already left two urgent-sounding messages on her cell phone. Call me, please. Dammit, Brenda, call me. But Brenda didn’t want—indeed, couldn’t afford—to call him back. Every phone call cost her a hundred dollars. If Brian had good news, such as the art restoration professional at Champion had found no permanent damage to the painting in question and the English Department had decided to drop all charges, then he could leave a message saying as much. And if Brian had bad news, she didn’t want to hear it. Every time her cell phone rang, she prayed it would be Walsh. That it should be her lawyer added insult to injury. But the cottage’s ringing phone took Brenda by surprise. She had known the phone number at Number Eleven Shell Street since she was a little girl, but she hadn’t given the number to Walsh or to Brian Delaney, Esquire. Which meant it was probably her mother.
    “Hello?” Brenda said.
    “Is my wife there?” a man asked. He sounded even angrier than Brenda.
    How did people live without caller ID? “Ted?” Brenda said.
    “I said, is my wife there? This is the number she left on the note. A note! ‘Gone for the summer.’ What the hell?”
    “You mean Melanie?” Brenda said. She was impressed that Melanie had bolted with only a note.
    “Yes, Melanie!”
    “She’s here,” Brenda said. “But she’s not available.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “I can’t explain it any more clearly,” Brenda said. “She . . . is . . .not . . . available.”
    “Put her on the phone,” the husband said.
    “No,” Brenda said. She gazed at her briefcase and felt fresh relief that it hadn’t vanished into the purgatory reserved for lost luggage, and then she checked on Porter, who had found the other half of Brenda’s pen. His mouth was bleeding blue ink. “Oh, geez,” Brenda said. When she lunged for the pen, Porter crawled away and Brenda nearly yanked the phone off the wall. In seconds, Porter and the pen were inches from Vicki’s bedroom door. “I’m sorry,” Brenda said. She hung up on Melanie’s husband.
    As she buckled Blaine and Porter into the double jog stroller, she wondered, Why isn’t there an Olympic crawling event for babies? Porter would win. Then she thought, Melanie’s husband sounded pretty damn entitled for someone who was having an affair.
    “I’m hungry,” Blaine said. “When are we having dinner?”
    “Good question,” Brenda said. She hadn’t eaten since Au Bon Pain in LaGuardia. There was no food in the house, and it was possible that Vicki might sleep until morning. Brenda ran inside and helped herself to forty dollars from Vicki’s wallet—she’d earned it.
    As Brenda pushed the stroller over the crushed shells toward the market, she thought, I am helping my sister, who is very sick . Sick sounded better than cancer . People got sick all the time, and then they got better. Vicki is sick, but she will get better, and in the meantime, I will take care of everything. But Brenda feared she wouldn’t be able to handle it. She had visited with the kids often since the previous September, when she moved back east from Iowa City to take the job at Champion—but she’d never had both of them alone for three whole hours. How did Vicki do it—one crawling all over creation, into everything, while the other one asked a hundred questions a minute, like, What’s your favorite number, Auntie Brenda? Mine is nine. No, actually, mine is three hundred and six. Is that more than fifty? How did Vicki keep her mind from turning into a bowl of porridge? Why had Brenda thought that spending the summer taking care of the children would be something she would excel at? What led her to believe that she’d have a single quiet hour to try her hand at screenwriting? Melanie had said she would pitch in, but look