If You Find Me by Emily Murdoch Read Free Book Online Page A

smooth Nessa’s curls off her forehead, my sister’s hair like a halo in the sun slanting through the high windows. “You girls take good care of each other, you hear? Like you did in the woods. You did a good job, Carey. A damn good job.” I duck my head and smile, unmoored by the flood of unexpected emotion.
“You’ll be okay, you know.”
I take a deep breath and find her eyes, green like Mama’s, but sharp and clear. She motions with her head in the man’s direction, and I nod with reluctance, the smile fading. I don’t see as we have much choice.
Mrs. Haskell grins at Nessa, who hops on one foot across the sparkling tiles, from white square to white square, avoiding the speckled ones. She presses the card into my hand.
“Don’t forget, Carey. Anytime. And look on the back.” I turn the card over and see written numbers.
“That’s my home number. Use it if you need it.”
We all watch Mrs. Haskell’s back zip down the hallway, and she waves over her shoulder without turning around. And then it’s just us, the three of us, sharing the same DNA in different ways, although we may as well be strangers from different planets. “Take your sister’s hand, Carey. You girls stay on the steps, and I’ll bring the truck around.”
I obey, taking Jenessa’s warm hand in my cool one as we follow a few paces behind. My legs tremble from all the sitting, but Nessa seems fine. She rubs her stomach in small circles, her face pleading. “You’re hungry already?”
She hops up and down, wagging her head.
“How about a nice bowl of baked beans with ketchup?” She stamps her foot.
“Kidding! We’ll have to see what he says, but I’m sure we’ll get something good.”
She skips down the hall, dragging me along.
I know what she’s saying, like I always do, even without the words. I’m dying to try the handburger, too, and the milk shake, which I remember to be something like drinkable ice cream. I don’t remember the handburger though, or the fries. Handburgers must be something you eat with your hands, not much different than in the woods. And french fries, well, French means France, so it must be something fried from France.
We may be backward in some ways, but Ness and me, we know our countries. We must have taken apart and put together Ness’s wooden puzzle of the world a few hundred times.
I do know what pizza is—it’s the favorite food of a little girl in one of Jenessa’s books, made of bread, white cheese, and tomato sauce, baked and served in triangles. And we had funnel cake once; Mama brought it back to the camper as a surprise, full of laughter and smiles, which meant her meth connection had come through. The man pulls around the front of the courthouse, waving us over from the driver’s seat. I help Jenessa up to the cab, sitting her between us, the lap belt stretched across us.
“You girls hungry?”
Jenessa bounces up and down, smiling, with all her teeth showing.
“She wants to know if we can have handburgers and milk shakes and french fries?”
The man—our father, now that it’s official—smiles at us; a full- on smile, one of the first.
“You bet you can. They have the best ones at the Rustic Inn, but it’ll take us about a half hour to get there. Can you two wait that long?”
Jenessa sighs loudly, her dimples swallowed up in a scowl. My father tries not to smile, and I appreciate that; no one likes a spoiled little girl. I think of the bulge of her belly after breakfast and marvel at how, once again, her stomach appears concave. But I don’t think she’s being cute at all.
I elbow Nessa.
“We can wait, sir.”
“Good. It’s worth the wait.”
Outvoted, Jenessa rests her head on my shoulder. I look out the window over her head, watching the scenery flash by. It all looks so unfamiliar, and I feel naked without the cover of our beautiful lofty trees. Even the sun feels hotter in the absence of the Hundred Acre Wood’s canopy of a million shimmying leaves.
Nessa stares out the