Echo Lake: A Novel by Letitia Trent Read Free Book Online Page A

dappled white ceilings and rough-surfaced walls above yards and yards of dull carpet.
    The church dining room was decorated with pink and purple fake flowers—wild roses and impossibly hued daisies—their fabric and wire stems tangled together in the bellies of dusty glass vases. Emily touched the plastic, clover-sprigged tablecloths and ran her fingernails over the flimsy material and the places where the white cotton poked out. These cheerful, shabby decorations made her think of other people’s mothers and grandmothers and dinners at her childhood friends’ houses. She had not minded the shabbiness then.
    She had wanted to live in those houses as a child and would have, if offered the opportunity through some fairy-tale means, changed herself into one of those girls. She could have slipped into their lives smoothly without as much as telling her mother goodbye. Then, she’d been in a constant state of embarrassment at the smallness of her mother’s life and their holidays celebrated alone over dinners that they’d be eating for days and days afterwards.
    In the dining hall, long, school-style tables were placed end-to-end in rows, chairs lined on either side. Most people had already claimed their seats by setting down their purses and Bibles.
    As a child, she had wanted nothing more than a community, family, friends, big groups of people meeting at long tables to eat together. But she’d gone too long without it, and now, she didn’t know quite how to act in such a place. People spoke to each other in the tones of resumed conversation. She stood in the doorway, her arms crossed. She wished then that she had Eric with her. At least he was somebody familiar. She could turn to him and speak and people would think she was normal.
    All of the Bibles worried her. It was a church, of course, but Levi had said it was a community event, that everyone was invited. But had that just been something he’d said to make her come and assure her that she wouldn’t be spending the night fielding offers of prayer?
    As she scanned the room for empty seats, for people who looked sympathetic to strangers or better yet, strangers themselves, she noticed that she might be the only single woman over twenty-five—the people her age were clearly coupled, their chairs pushed close together, their fingers entwined while waiting in the food line. Some had children old enough to toddle or even walk, and some had babies strapped into highchairs who whacked their fat hands or spoons against the plastic tables.
    Groups of teenagers clung together, some wearing t-shirts featuring pictures of a pale, blue-eyed Jesus, either alive with a glowing heart or nailed to the cross, gaunt and bleeding from the forehead. The girls were as flush-faced and nervous as any other teenage girls in the presence of boys. The boys wore clean jeans and t-shirts and had short hair. No earrings or tattoos, or at least none that she could see.
    Hello, sweetheart.
    Emily jumped and looked down to find the source of the voice. An old woman stood at Emily’s elbow. She reached out with crepey hands and touched Emily’s shoulder. She smelled delicate and well-preserved, like a dried prom corsage.
    Are you new to our church family?
    The woman was small and impossibly fragile, her hair gray and thick, braided down her back. Her knitted shawl swallowed her shoulders. Her face, small-boned but fleshy and lined, gave an impression of beatitude.
    Oh, no, Emily said, I’m just here for dinner. She closed her eyes as the old woman’s hands moved down her arm and enclosed her fingers.
    Levi invited me, she said. He said it was a community event, open to everyone, she explained, as though defending her right to be here. She tried not to move away from the woman’s hands. It was wrong to be afraid of the elderly, the imperfect. She’d be elderly someday, too, clawing at people for attention despite the skin that hung from her bones, thin and spotted. But Emily was afraid of