It Wasn't Always Like This by Joy Preble Read Free Book Online

point of being antisocial, from what Emma had uncovered.
    Hiding in plain sight .
    Emma studied Melanie’s face as she rambled on about silly pranks, like toilet-papering Barrett Jones’s house the night after a big football game.
    “The next day Elodie brought him a dozen chocolate cupcakes. Smart girl.”
    Melanie’s expression shifted. “Her . . . poor aunt and uncle. Here they take her in after her folks were killed in a car accident in Orlando last year, and she’d been doing so well. She was like their own daughter. And now this. I don’t think you ever get over losing a child. Or a parent either, when you’re so young.”
    “No,” said Emma. “You don’t.”
    Her mind raced with this new set of facts: Elodie had been a transplant (like Allie), and her parents were dead (like Allie’s). “So she was from Florida?”
    Melanie nodded. “Oh, that’s right. You said you were, too. What part?”
    “St. Augustine originally. But we, um, moved around a lot.”
    In Emma’s head, pieces of a puzzle edged together. Tentatively. Maybe. Because lots of people could have poisoned Elodie Callahan. Maybe even Tyler Gentry, although Emma doubted it. Maybe he’d gone overboard with a date-rape drug and panicked. People thought horrible thoughts, and occasionally those thoughts turned to deeds, and girls turned up dead. That’s how the world worked. Certain parts of it, anyway. The sick parts, the parts Emma had seen again and again over the years.
    Was the Church of Light involved? Maybe. Were they connected to this place of worship in some perverse way? Looking down at Melanie’s sad face now, Emma couldn’t bring herself to believe it. Melanie certainly didn’t know if they were hiding in plain sight. But regardless of the perpetrator, the murder of Elodie Callahan was an undeniable fact, one that would be true and unchangeable forever, even if their resemblance and their Florida roots added up to nothing more than coincidence.
    Emma’s gut told her otherwise. She tried to listen to her gut, because unlike her brain, it was seldom mistaken. On the other hand, there were those tacos last night. But if she’d listened to her gut years ago, then maybe she and Charlie—
    The thought was interrupted as Melanie Creighton stood and swept Emma into a teary hug. “Welcome to the Fellowship family!”

Chapter Five
    St. Augustine, Florida
    1913
    The f irst time Emma kissed Charlie Ryan—really kissed him the way a girl kisses a boy she loves, and who loves her back—was on the night of her real seventeenth birthday, her f irst seventeenth birthday, the one that counted.
    Both families had just sat down to a specialty of her mother’s, vanilla cake with lemon f illing. Emma was wearing the new skirt that showed off her shapely ankles and a blouse with a v-neckline her mother thought was scandalous. So did Emma. Not that she’d ever say such a thing out loud, but it made her want to wear the blouse every day. By that time, she had given up taking her mother’s advice on most things.
    Seven years had passed since the day of the hawk.
    It was Saturday, a relatively cool February night, and the Alligator Farm had done good business. The tourist population swelled in the winters. Even the gators had seemed to enjoy themselves while on display. The O’Neills and the Ryans weren’t rich, not yet, but tonight their coffers were full of admission fees. Emma had sold out of the alligator f igurines and commemorative postcards in the gift shop by the entrance.
    Now that they were closed and the tourists had all gone back to their hotels and rented cabins, it was just the O’Neills and the Ryans. Tonight they’d crowded into the O’Neill kitchen for roast chicken and potatoes and then the cake—all Emma’s favorites. Well, everyone except Baby Simon, who toddled around the house and occasionally out the door like a miniature drunk. He was not quite two, his birthday still a month away at the end of March.
    Emma had been