Necessary Lies by Diane Chamberlain Read Free Book Online

said. “Your daddy was full of good times. Remember when he took us and the Jordans on that hay ride?”
    “Mm,” I said. Thinking about my daddy could make me sad.
    “He did that just for fun. No other reason. I want to be a father like him. Not like my own father. Mine ain’t no fun at all. Everything’s about work with him.”
    I liked Mr. Gardiner and didn’t want Henry Allen to be so mean about him. “Maybe my daddy seemed so fun because we was little when he was around, so he didn’t make us do any work.”
    “Maybe,” Henry Allen agreed. “But I swear, I got more memories of him from when I was little than my own daddy.”
    That was real sweet, I thought. I leaned my cheek against his shoulder. “He would of liked us ending up together,” I said. I’d noticed he didn’t mention my mother. No one wanted a mama like mine. I tapped the book.
    “What’s on the next page?” I asked.
    We went through all the pages. There was trees as big around as the tobacco barns and foggy cliffs called Big Sur and rocks in the ocean covered with seals and big black birds. There was actual palm trees. How could one place have so many different beautiful parts to it? I felt that ache in my chest again as he turned the pages. I wanted to step inside the book and live that beautiful life. Henry Allen said everybody in California was rich and had swimming pools in their own yards. I wished California was right next door to Grace County and I could walk over there tomorrow.
    “Which place you want to live?” Henry Allen asked.
    “Any of ’em.”
    “No, get serious. Let’s pick our top place from these here pictures.”
    “Someplace by the water.”
    He turned the pages and I stopped him. “There,” I said, pointing to a pretty little tree standing all alone, way out on a cliff above the ocean. “This place.”
    “Monterey,” he said. “Okay, then. That’s our destination. Monterey, California.”
    “What about you, though? Which place do you want to live at?”
    “Wherever you are,” he said.
    My throat got tight. “What if I’m here, Henry Allen? What if I can’t never leave?” Me and Henry Allen used to say we’d run off after we finished school, which meant three more years for me and two for him, but I couldn’t see how I’d ever be able to leave Mary Ella or Nonnie or Baby William. Everything would fall to pieces without me. I felt sad all of a sudden. All me and Henry Allen had was the dream. So we didn’t talk about the when no more. Just the where .
    “We’re still goin’.” He put his arm around me and squeezed me to him. “We’ll work it out one of these days.”
    “They got tobacco farms in California?” I asked, letting myself back into the dream. “We have to get jobs.”
    “No more farming,” he said. “We’ll get better jobs.”
    “Doing what?”
    “I don’t know, but ones where you don’t gotta ruin your hands and I don’t gotta break my back.”
    “I still want to be a teacher,” I said.
    “Have to go to college for that,” he said.
    I groaned. Three more years of high school was bad enough, but I wasn’t going to worry about that right yet.
    Henry Allen rolled onto his back and pulled me on top of him, then suddenly froze up. “You ain’t got nothin’ on, girl!” he said.
    “Do, too.” I laughed. “I got my nightgown on.”
    “What’s under it?”
    “Just me.”
    “How am I supposed to control myself with you all naked like this?”
    I laughed again. “Seems to me you stopped controlling yourself with me a long time ago,” I said.
    He slid his warm palms under my nightgown and up the outside of my legs and I bent over to kiss him, long and soft the way he liked it. The first time me and Henry Allen done it, I was scared in a hundred different ways. Scared of changing our friendship in a way we couldn’t fix. And I was scared of ending up like Mary Ella. But doing it only made us closer and he promised me I’d never end up like Mary Ella. He always