Crooked by Laura McNeal Read Free Book Online

have hot chocolate with breakfast?” Clara asked.
    â€œIf you run upstairs and get dressed first. You should put on some layers if you’re going to be shoveling and then running all over the place for Mrs. Harper. And I need you to do our driveway first. For free.”
    While Clara was standing in the upstairs hallway pulling a comb through wads of wet, snarled hair, the phone rang again. When the voice asking for Clara Wilson turned out to be male and young, a little vacuum opened up in her chest, a wide, sinking space that made it hard for her to say, in proper English, “This is she.”
    â€œHello, this is Amos MacKenzie,” the voice said. “And I’m naked as a jaybird.”
    â€œWhat?” Clara asked.
    â€œNaked,” the voice said again.
    â€œThat’s disgusting,” Clara said, and quickly replaced the phone.
    â€œWhat’s disgusting?” her mother asked. She’d come up the stairs with Ham and was looking through the linen cupboard. The linen cupboard was the one place in the house that had flourished in the past few years. The shelves overflowed with lacy bargains she brought home from Kaufmann’s, and every time her mother felt depressed about a failed scheme for a more exciting job, she would bring home a new piece of cloth and say, “Isn’t it splendid, Clara? It’s the one good thing about my job, so I’d better take advantage of it.”
    â€œI just got a prank phone call,” Clara said.
    â€œWhat did they say?”
    â€œIt was just some kid at school. He called to say he was naked.”
    Her mother folded a burgundy plaid blanket into a tighter square. “Do you know who it was?”
    â€œNo.” This was more or less the truth.
    â€œAre you sure it was a boy, not an adult?”
    â€œYes,” Clara said. In the back of her mind, she hoped it wasn’t really Amos. She had no idea what his voice sounded like on the phone because she’d hardly spoken to him in person. It just didn’t seem like something he would do, not unless he thought the note she’d left him was dumb and this nasty phone call was his way of saying, “Grow up. I’m too old for silly notes from girls I hardly know.”
    â€œIf he calls again, hang up immediately, then call me at work and I’ll call the phone company. Okay?”
    Clara nodded.
    â€œOkay, then. And when you get the groceries for Mrs. Harper, will you get some things for us?” her mother asked.
    â€œFor dinner, you mean?” Clara asked. “I thought you were going to eat at work.”
    â€œWell, I changed my mind. Here’s some money and the list.”
    The list contained ingredients for the Thai supper, and Clara felt, as she read
cellophane noodles
and
coconut milk,
that she had never been so happy to see a list of foods she hated.
    By the time Clara was heading off to Sylvia Harper’s, her mother had brought a cup of coffee out to the living room, sat down on the couch, and begun turning through the black pages of the photo album, studying the pictures.
    Mrs. Harper was watching from her curtains when Clara approached the square white house with the glass porch. To Clara’s horror, Ham lifted his leg, aimed more or less at the front gatepost, and left a dizzy yellow pattern on the snow. In her mind, Clara said
damn
three times. Pulling Ham away from the snowdrift only widened the pattern he made, and beneath her heavy clothes, Clara felt herself begin to sweat. Mrs. Harper frowned through the curtains, but Clara finally managed to get Ham to follow her up the steps. A dusty Christmas wreath made of cinnamon sticks and pinecones was still on the door, and when Clara wiped off her feet, she could smell crushed cinnamon and cats.
    â€œYou brought that dog with you” was the first thing Mrs. Harper said when she opened the door. “I hope he won’t chase my cats.”
    â€œHe’s not interested in