Fall from Grace by L. R. Wright Read Free Book Online Page A

he said, after a long time. He stepped close to her. “Annabelle—”
    â€œShhhh,” said Annabelle, laying her index finger across his lips.
    â€œMama!” cried Camellia, crashing through the bushes. She stopped in confusion to see a strange man in the garden with her mother.
    Annabelle stepped away from Bobby Ransome, toward Camellia.
    Bobby looked at the child, and then at Annabelle. She imagined that she could hear his heartbeat, fast and hard. Finally he nodded, and backed through the brush, and was gone.

Chapter 4
    C ASSANDRA MITCHELL LEANED back in the swing, letting her long dark hair hang down behind it. “Maybe she is crazy,” she mused. “She could be crazy. She talks to herself, after all.” She closed her eyes, and the day was still so bright that light filtered through her eyelids, creating a field of pink.
    â€œMe, too,” said Alberg. “I talk to myself, too.”
    Alberg’s daughter Diana, who had a summer job with the local newspaper, was working that evening. So Alberg and Cassandra had gone to Earl’s Café for hamburgers. Now they were sitting on a garden swing in Cassandra’s backyard, drinking lemonade and talking about Hetty Willis.
    â€œProbably you’re both just eccentric,” said Cassandra tolerantly.
    Hetty Willis pedaled about the town on an elderly bicycle, a brown-paper shopping bag riding in the wire carrier. She wore a black shawl all the time, whatever the weather; it was draped around her shoulders and tied in a knot in front. She was never seen wearing a jacket or a coat; she never carried an umbrella.
    â€œShe lives in that big house all by herself,” Cassandra went on. “Except for her cats.”
    And she did talk to herself—often, and unintelligibly. Sometimes she came into the library, to peer at the spines of books, and her incoherent mutterings could empty the place in minutes.
    Cassandra lifted her head. “So, tell me. Why’re you asking about her?”
    â€œI have to talk to her,” said Alberg.
    â€œWhat about?” said Cassandra. She didn’t really expect him to tell her. “See, look at that, now,” she said in disgust, pointing at him.
    â€œWhat? What?” said Alberg.
    â€œYour face gets all closed off. It smooths itself out and closes itself off. That makes me so mad, I cannot tell you how angry that makes me.” She pushed herself off the swing. Sometimes she thought she didn’t know him any better now than the day they’d first met, in the Harrisons’ restaurant for lunch, after he’d replied to her “Companions” ad in the Vancouver Sun .
    Alberg, smiling, stood up and put his arms around her. “I like the way you smell,” he said. “I like the way you look, too.”
    â€œI’m overweight,” said Cassandra into his shirt. “I’m getting old.”
    â€œYou don’t know nothin’ about old,” said Alberg with a sigh, “until you’re staring fifty in the face.”
    She gazed at him, thoroughly exasperated. Was it a good thing, she wondered, or a bad thing, that he’d forgotten she was only three years younger than he.
    He touched the side of her neck with his tongue and moved his lips to her ear. “I love you,” he said to her ear; he didn’t even know for sure that he’d said it out loud. But then she turned her head and drew back to look at him, and there was such solemnity on her face that he knew he must have actually said the words. And he was dismayed. And this must have shown in his eyes, because she shook her head and laughed at him.

    The blue house stood on the east side of the road, high on the hill that dropped down to Davis Bay. He pulled off the highway onto a chunk of concrete that was cracked and crumbling, with weeds growing from every seam and fissure, weeds now brown and dead, killed prematurely by the brutal summer.
    Alberg cut the motor