Endless Chain by Emilie Richards Read Free Book Online Page A

expected to produce them.
    “A friend invited me to share her home while I looked for work. I was ready to leave…Texas.”
    “I would imagine so.” Helen sounded as if she could not conceive of anyone who wouldn’t prefer Virginia.
    Tessa slowed at a crossroads, then sped up again. “Do you like it here?”
    “I like everything but the rain.”
    “It’s not usually like this. Last summer was dry. This summer is wet. Maybe next summer will be just right.”
    “Too dry, too wet, just right…Sounds like you’ve been practicing your Three Bears,” Helen said. “Getting ready for the baby.”
    Elisa wanted to slip out of the spotlight. She leaned forward. “I couldn’t help but notice there’s a baby on the way. Will it be soon?”
    “It better not be,” Tessa said. Elisa thought there was a touch of anxiety in the reply.
    “She’s due in January,” Helen said. “And she refuses to find out the sex. And she hasn’t chosen names because that’s bad luck.”
    “No, we haven’t chosen names because there are too many choices.”
    “Because it’s bad luck,” Helen repeated.
    Tessa sped up some more, as if she hoped to distract or drop off her grandmother quickly. “Do you have children, Elisa?”
    “I’m not married. My roommate has two. I enjoy them.”
    “I never did see the point of babies,” Helen said. “Of course, Tessa’s will be different.” She said this as if Tessa had better make sure of it.
    Rain began to fall in earnest, not the teasing harbinger of a storm but the real thing at last. Tessa snapped on her windshield wipers and slowed to a crawl. “I’m certainly glad you didn’t try to walk home in this.”
    Elisa was glad, too. She was frightened of storms, although she did not let that deter her from going out in them if she had to. She didn’t have the luxury of giving in to haunting memories or of forgetting why she was afraid.
    “You don’t even have an umbrella,” Helen chided.
    Elisa looked at Helen instead of the storm outside the window. “In a real storm, an umbrella means nothing. And I didn’t want to carry anything I didn’t need to.”
    “Well, we’re almost to the park,” Tessa said. “Isn’t that the turnoff just ahead?”
    Elisa saw she was right. The trip was so short, so easy, in a car.
    Tessa pulled into the drive leading to a village of less than a dozen mobile homes separated by tiny, sloping lots. One home, just off to the side, had a canopy and a sign in front announcing it was the office, although in truth, little business was ever accomplished there. Some of the homes were fronted by awnings adorned with hanging plants; some had storage sheds; some had a rosebush or flower borders. In a field just yards away a chestnut mare grazed on dandelions and crabgrass.
    Elisa pointed to the fourth home on the right, which had a metal awning over a small plywood porch. “Right there.”
    Tessa pulled alongside it. “Will they mind if I park under the canopy by the office for a minute? I’m going to get out and clean some mud off the windshield. My wipers aren’t getting it.”
    “You need new wipers,” Helen said. “And that’s a fact.”
    “No one would mind,” Elisa said. She thanked Tessa, who assured her again it had been no trouble; then Elisa said goodbye to Helen. She got out and stayed on the porch to wave goodbye as they turned and started toward the office, just across the gravel road.
    The door was locked, which surprised her, since she had expected Adoncia to be home. To the drumming of rain on the metal awning, she slipped off her backpack and fumbled through it for her key.
    Once the door was open, she started inside, but something made her turn, perhaps a noise that didn’t seem to be part of the storm, an instinct. She saw Tessa, parked now under the office canopy, slumped against the side of the car. Elisa leapt off the porch and sprinted across the road. Helen had emerged by the time she got there, and the two of them caught