No Way Home by Patricia MacDonald Read Free Book Online

with the keys in the lock.
    “Oh, it’s probably some old flame,” she said airily, but she stood there poised, waiting for a denial.
    Jordan was already through the door. It’s bad news, he thought. It could only be bad news at this hour. His first thought was of his mother. She was nearly seventy now. She lived alone in Felton, although his older sister, Jeni Rae, lived in Chattanooga, which wasn’t far. His mother was healthy, but anything could happen at that age.
    “I guess I’ll head out,” Amanda said uncertainly. She took a pair of sunglasses out of her purse and put them on, even though it was the middle of the night.
    “Okay, okay,” Jordan called out. He said a silent prayer for his mother as he stumbled across the clothes on the floor toward the phone. Just as he lifted the receiver, his gaze fell on the picture of Michele. For a moment his heart froze. Then he dismissed it. She was young and, at long last, healthy and perfect. Her whole life lay ahead of her. No, he thought. Maybe it was a friend. Or somebody from the soap who’d had a few and needed to talk. Everybody had problems they wanted to unload. And for an actor, two in the morning wasn’t that late. That’s right, he reminded himself. That’s right. It’s not that late. “Hello,” he said calmly into the phone.
    Amanda thrust her lower lip out and looked at him with narrowed eyes behind her dark glasses. She gave a little huffy sigh, but he did not turn around. She slammed the door behind her.
    Jordan held the phone to his ear and listened to Lillie’s words. He asked a few questions and said he understood. And he thanked her for calling him. Then he fumbled, blindly, with the telephone receiver until he finally was able to hang it up, and he sat down in a chair in the corner of the room.
    All night he sat there silent, alone, in a rage, in a sweat, and, finally, as the dawn came, in a fearful recognition of his loss. For the one good, right thing he was trying to do in his life was over. His only child was gone.

Chapter 3
    SOMETIME DURING THE NIGHT Lillie had lain down on her bed for an hour or two, but she did not sleep. The sheriff had forbidden her and Pink to return to the crime scene with him or to go to the morgue. The doctor had come in the middle of the night but she’d refused the tranquilizer he prescribed. No one would allow her to leave the house and so, at four in the morning, she began to clean it.
    Now the kitchen windows were bare. Stripped of their covering, they glinted in the harsh light of the day. The cotton eyelet curtains, still damp from the morning washing, were heaped in a plastic laundry basket on the kitchen table. In the middle of the floor, Lillie bent over the ironing board, meticulously pressing the first set of valances into crisp perfection. She heard the knock at the back door but she did not look up from her task.
    “Grayson,” she said.
    “Yes’m…” Grayson, who was slumped over the kitchen table, his smooth forehead sunk in his hand, got up at once and headed toward the back door. Before he had a chance to reach it, the door opened and Brenda Daniels burst into the kitchen. Her frosted blond hair was blowzy, the lines around her mouth and on her forehead looked as if they had been dug with an awl. She was clutching a foil-covered plate. She stopped still and stared at her friend.
    “Lillie, what on earth are you doing?” she exclaimed.
    Lillie looked up at her almost fearfully, her dark eyes sunken in her pale face. The iron trembled in her clenched fist. Her dark hair stood out in wild curls around her head. “I’m ironing.”
    “She’s been like this all morning,” Grayson said tiredly.
    “Put that away, honey,” said Brenda.
    Lillie set the iron carefully down on the trivet and walked to her friend. The two women clung together. Brenda sobbed while Lillie stared, dry-eyed, over her shoulder.
    “Oh, Lillie-Lou,” Brenda whispered, using a name she hadn’t called her friend