If She Should Die by Carlene Thompson Read Free Book Online Page A

lot?”
    “Yeah. Lately lots more than usual. Anyway, I’m
starving
.”
    “Me, too,” Christine lied. She certainly didn’t want to drop Jeremy off at the empty Prince home to scrounge dinner for himself and think about Dara. “How about going to Gus’s Grill?”
    “Good. I’ll have a cheeseburger and a banana split.”
    Half an hour later they sat in a dark green booth in the intimate Gus’s Grill, whose decoration scheme could only be described as eclectic, a mixture of the Mexican, Chinese, and French restaurants it had been in past lives over the last fifteen years. Christine was particularly fondof the renovated mural along one wall showing a woman in a kimono serving spaghetti and meatballs. They ordered loudly above the theme song from
Exodus
Gus had blaring over the speakers.
    “I’ll tell him to turn the music down,” the waitress said to Christine after she’d repeated her drink order for the third time.
    “Don’t hurt his feelings,” Christine said. “I know it’s his favorite song.”
    The waitress rolled her eyes. “Gus’s feelings are made of steel. Couldn’t hurt ’em if you tried. And if
I
have to listen to that song one more time today, I’m going to hit him on the head with a frying pan.”
    Jeremy laughed uproariously and the waitress smiled at Christine. She always tried to get a laugh out of Jeremy when they ate at Gus’s.
    A few minutes later, when the waitress delivered their drinks and the music had been lowered a fraction, Christine asked Jeremy where he thought Patricia went so much of the time.
    “Don’t know.” Jeremy noisily sucked Cherry Coke through a straw. “Nobody tells me anything. I get pretty bored and lonely at home, Christy. I only stay because Ames likes me around. Well, sometimes. Other times he acts like I’m invisible.”
    Which wasn’t good for Jeremy, Christine thought. She knew her brother needed constant stimulation and a sense of purpose. She particularly disliked his being lonely. Ever since she’d bought a house late last summer, she’d planned to have him permanently move in with her. The basement was large and with an abundance of windows, giving it an unusual amount of daylight for a basement, and offered both inside and outside entrances. She’d decorated the whole area to look like a big loft apartment to give Jeremy a feeling of maturity and privacy while still living with her.
    Before the holidays she’d told Ames she wanted Jeremy to move in, but Ames had begged her to let Jeremy stay until after Easter. “I’d miss him too much on long, dark winter evenings,” Ames had said. But today had changed a lot of things. Even if this body did not turn out to be Dara’s, the fear that it had been was likely to throw Ames into a depression Jeremy didn’t need to be around. And it sounded as if Patricia wasn’t home much, although she rarely went out of her way to entertain Jeremy. While Christine forced down half a cheeseburger she didn’t want, she decided the time had come for Jeremy to move in with her.
    “You’re hardly eating,” Jeremy commented. “You usually eat as much as me, maybe more.”
    “That is not true!” Christine retorted heatedly, then noticed Jeremy’s twitching lips. He was trying to get her to smile. She obliged. “I happen to be watching my weight, smarty. I haven’t been going to the gym as much as I need to.”
    “But you’re not fat. Just tall.”
    At five feet, ten inches, Christine had always felt like an Amazon beside petite Dara, in spite of her vigilant maintenance of her weight. Danny Torrance, the gym manager, told her she was perfectly proportioned although she needed to be more diligent about her workouts to build strength. But then, Danny had been a family friend for years and could be counted on for a compliment.
    As soon as he’d finished the very last drop of his ice cream, noisily scraping the sides of his glass dish, Jeremy looked at her and frowned. “I don’t really want to sleep