Just After Sunset by Stephen King Read Free Book Online Page B

traveler’s checks.
    She realized she wasn’t going home, not for a while. And when the realization caused a feeling of relief—maybe even fugitive excitement—instead of sorrow, she suspected this was not a temporary thing.
    She went into the Morris Hotel to use the phone, then decided on the spur of the moment to take a room. Did they have anything for just the one night? They did. She gave the desk clerk her AmEx card.
    “It doesn’t look like you’ll need a bellman,” the clerk said, taking in her shorts and T-shirt.
    “I left in a hurry.”
    “I see.” Spoken in the tone of voice that said he didn’t see at all. She took the key he slid to her and hurried across the wide lobby to the elevators, restraining the urge to run.
    –2–

    You sound like you might be crying.

    She wanted to buy some clothes—a couple of skirts, a couple of shirts, two pairs of jeans, another pair of shorts—but before shopping she had calls to make: one to Henry and one to her father. Her father was in Tallahassee. She decided she had better call him first. She couldn’t recall the number of his office phone in the motor pool but had his cell-phone number memorized. He answered on the first ring. She could hear engines revving in the background.
    “Em! How are you?”
    That should have been a complex question, but wasn’t. “I’m fine, Dad. But I’m in the Morris Hotel. I guess I’ve left Henry.”
    “Permanently or just a kind of trial balloon?” He didn’t sound surprised—he took things in stride; she loved that about him—but the sound of the revving motors first faded, then disappeared. She imagined him going into his office, closing the door, perhaps picking up the picture of her that stood on his cluttered desk.
    “Can’t say yet. Right now it doesn’t look too good.”
    “What was it about?”
    “Running.”
    “Running?”
    She sighed. “Not really. You know how sometimes a thing is about something else? Or a whole bunch of something elses?”
    “The baby.” Her father had not called her Amy since the crib death. Now it was always just the baby.
    “And the way I’m handling it. Which is not the way Henry wants me to. It occurred to me that I’d like to handle things in my own way.”
    “Henry’s a good man,” her father said, “but he has a way of seeing things. No doubt.”
    She waited.
    “What can I do?”
    She told him. He agreed. She knew he would, but not until he heard her all the way out. The hearing out was the most important part, and Rusty Jackson was good at it. He hadn’t risen from one of three mechanics in the motor pool to maybe one of the four most important people at the Tallahassee campus (and she hadn’t heard that from him; he’d never say something like that to her or anyone else) by not listening.
    “I’ll send Mariette in to clean the house,” he said.
    “Dad, you don’t need to do that. I can clean.”
    “I want to,” he said. “A total top-to-bottom is overdue. Damn place has been closed up for almost a year. I don’t get down to Vermillion much since your mother died. Seems like I can always find some more to do up here.”
    Em’s mother was no longer Debra to him, either. Since the funeral (ovarian cancer), she was just your mother.
    Em almost said, Are you sure you don’t mind this? but that was the kind of thing you said when a stranger offered to do you a favor. Or a different kind of father.
    “You going there to run?” he asked. She could hear a smile in his voice. “There’s plenty of beach to run on, and a good long stretch of road, too. As you well know. And you won’t have to elbow people out of your way. Between now and October, Vermillion is as quiet as it ever gets.”
    “I’m going there to think. And—I guess—to finish mourning.”
    “That’s all right, then,” he said. “Want me to book your flight?”
    “I can do that.”
    “Sure you can. Emmy, are you okay?”
    “Yes,” she said.
    “You sound like you might be