Darkness by John Saul Read Free Book Online Page B

through the town that afternoon—if you could really call it a town—she hadn’t seen any interesting-looking kids at all. In fact, they’d all looked like the kind of boring jerks she’d laughed at in Atlanta.
    The kind of boring jerks who’d never bothered to speak to her.
    Putting the thought out of her mind, she finished unpacking her clothes, which didn’t come close to filling the walk-in closet, and filled the medicine cabinet with all the cosmetics that had been stuffed in the top drawer of her dresser back in Atlanta. Finally, she unrolled a couple of the posters she’d peeled from her walls at home; but when she held them up against the brightly flowered wallpaper, she changed her mind and stuffed the whole bunch of them into the wastebasket. The room, she decided, was just perfect the way her grandfather had done it.
    She went to the window, gazing out across the lawn and the canal toward the swamp. The daylight was beginning to fade, but there was still an hour before it would be completely dark. Maybe she should go out and take a look around. She started toward the door, then remembered her grandfather’s words.
    I’m just going outside, she told herself. It’s not like I’m meeting someone. Why would they forbid her to go out for a little while?
    Leaving the room through the interior door, she wentdown the stairs to the main level, and found her parents and grandfather in the den. “Is it okay if I go for a walk?” she asked. There was a brief silence as her parents looked uncertainly at each other. Kelly was sure she knew what they were thinking.
    Where is she going?
    What is she going to do?
    Is she going to get into trouble?
    Is she going to try to kill herself again?
    The good mood she’d been feeling all afternoon evaporated, and she turned away. “N-Never mind,” she murmured, starting back out of the den. Her grandfather’s voice stopped her.
    “What the hell’s going on?” she heard him ask. “She’s sixteen years old. Can’t she go for a walk at seven o’clock in the evening?”
    She froze, then slowly turned around. Her mother was staring at her grandfather, her face pale, her eyes frightened.
    Her father was licking his lips nervously.
    For what seemed to her an eternity, no one said anything.
    Then her grandfather looked straight at her.
    “You planning to do anything stupid?” he asked. “Like jump in the canal?”
    Kelly’s eyes widened at the shock of his words.
    “Dad!” Ted said sharply, but Carl Anderson held up a hand to silence his son.
    “Now come on,” he rumbled. “We all know what happened, and I don’t see how it’s going to hurt to ask a simple question. If you’re planning to try to watch her every minute of every day, then maybe you should have locked her up.”
    “Carl,” Mary began, “you don’t understand—”
    “No, I don’t,” Carl broke in, his voice much gentler. “I don’t understand at all. But I know you brought Kelly down here to give her a chance at a new life, and it seems to me you might as well start right now.”
    Mary hesitated for a moment, her eyes never leavingher father-in-law’s face. It was a strong face, unlined, looking at least twenty years younger than its sixty-four years. His hair, the same burnished chestnut as Ted’s, showed not a hint of gray, and his blue eyes were as bright as those of any young man just starting out in the world. That, she supposed, was the result of his ultimate triumph—he’d hung on, and finally made a success of his life, and it had given him a strength she’d never really noticed before.
    The words he’d just spoken, she realized, had the ring of truth. They were here to start over again—all of them—and they might just as well start now. She turned to her daughter.
    “How long will you be gone?”
    Kelly felt a surge of hope. “N-Not very long. I just thought I’d walk along the canal and look at all the houses Granddaddy built.”
    Mary took a deep breath. “All right.