Fatal Deduction by Gayle Roper Read Free Book Online

twenty. They had married a month later, Dad already on the way.
    There was a very similar picture of Mom and Dad at about the same age, Dad a big bull of a man in his uniform, Mom impossibly slim in her jeans and shirt. Tori and I had shown up a mere five months later.
    What had happened to all that fine promise?
    “Nan and Pop are still a pretty good-looking pair.” Tori spread marmalade on a muffin, but she only managed one bite before pushing her plate away. “I hope I look that good when I’m their age.”
    “I bet you’ll be even prettier,” Chloe said. I noticed wryly that she didn’t include me in that comment.
    Tori shot me a mocking look. “And I didn’t know you kept family pictures, Libby. I thought you’d washed your hands of us sinful Keatings.”
    I shrugged uncomfortably. I loved my family, I truly did, but for me they were as toxic as arsenic. It wasn’t because of Dad and Pop being in jail, though that was obviously no picnic. It was the family mind-set, all negativity and criticism, bitterness and resentment. Life had not turned out the way everyone had expected, and they blamed the universe. Certainly it wasn’t their fault.
    From the day I became a Christian at seventeen, I was often the target of everyone’s verbal battery. Not that I had escaped before, butit was as if I had betrayed them when I trusted my life to Christ. The nicer I tried to be, the more critical they became, even Tori. Especially Tori.
    “You’re too sensitive,” she told me once when she’d made me cry. It was like she had a momentary pang of conscience. “You just need to tell us all off. Stand up to us for a change. Sass us for all you’re worth.”
    There were two problems with that advice. One, I had never sassed anyone in my life. I was a peacemaker, not a troublemaker. And two, as a new Christian still feeling my way in matters of faith and practice, I didn’t think I was supposed to give as good as I got. There was all that turn-the-other-cheek stuff.
    So I kept pictures because pictures were safe. They never mocked you or made fun of your faith or heaped bitter invective on you. They smiled at you and let you make believe your family loved and appreciated you.
    Chloe carried her dirty dishes to the sink without being told. I held my breath as she bumped her plate on the edge of the sink, but nothing seemed to chip or break. She smiled at Tori. “I think you sinful Keatings are cool.”
    “That we are, kiddo. That we are,” Tori said with a smirk at me.
    Oh, God!
I prayed as that all-too-familiar fear washed over me.
Please let Chloe see through them. Please don’t let her go down the same path they’ve followed. Please let her follow Christ! Please!
    “I’m going to take a shower, Aunt Tori.” Chloe walked out of the room, all unaware of my alarm at her comment. She paused at the base of the stairs. “Then I’ll go get Jenna. We’ll be ready whenever you want us.”
    “Ten,” Tori said, amazingly perky after her night out.
    I shifted slightly as Chloe raced up the stairs, and the paper in my pocket crackled. I glanced at Tori’s
Times
puzzle booklet, now sitting on the counter. Everyone who knew Tori for any length of time knew she was crazy about crosswords. She carried puzzles with her the way ardent readers carried paperbacks.
    “Did you know that man on the steps?” I watched Tori closely. She was one of the best liars I’d ever met. “Because he somehow knew you.”
    Her eyes went wide with innocence, a sure sign she was about to lie.

5

    T ORI SHOOK HER HEAD , her eyes earnest. “I didn’t know him.”
    “You turned awfully pale when you saw him.”
    “I’ll bet you did too,” she shot back. “And cops make me turn pale too.”
    I reached into my pocket and pulled out the paper. I unfolded the eight-and-a-half-by-eleven sheet until only one fold remained. I held it out for her to see.
    T ORI , handwritten in block letters.
    A flash of something like fear appeared before she