Only Flesh and Bones by Sarah Andrews Read Free Book Online

trailed off suggestively.
    “Well, of course that changed things,” I said reassuringly. “Why didn’t you just turn them over to the police?”
    Cindey Howard stared into my face like I’d just sprouted a second head. “The police ? Are you raving ?”
    “Well—”
    She sucked in her breath. “I shouldn’t have shown you!”
    “No! No, it’s okay. They’re secret, I can see, and your
secret is mine,” I added hurriedly. “I just … I mean, is there something in here?”
    Her face went blank. “Well … I just read around in them.” She looked sideways, discomfort pinching her pudgy face. “Kind of looked over the bits when Cecelia was a baby, see if there was anything that might mean something to her.”
    “Find anything?”
    A bit too quickly, she said, “No, it was the usual stuff, all bitching about the diapers. Real drivel.”
    I asked questions automatically, a scientist’s knee-jerk reaction to incoming data. “Had you known Miriam a long time?”
    “Since college.”
    Speaking before I thought, I said, “But she didn’t write anything about you in there.”
    Cindey Howard stared at the floor. Her lips formed a word she could not speak: no.

EIGHT
    I N Boulder two hours later, I pulled my truck over into the off-street parking slip Betty had pointed out to me and rattled the gate so that Stanley the dog would let me know if he was loose. As his answering chorus of barking was muffled through closed doors and windows, I risked the yard, crossing quickly to the outside stairs.
    Upstairs in my room, I tiredly dumped the box of journals on the floor, irritated to have them in my possession. During the drive home, I’d had time to think about the responsibility they represented, and I wanted no part of it. They had not been written for my eyes. I had never met Miriam Menken, had not worried about her existence while she was alive, and saw no greater reason to get to know her now that she was dead. I shucked off my boots and placed them on top of the box to keep the flaps firmly shut.
    Jeans off, sweater and underwear in a pile at the foot of the bed, I shuffled myself into the shower with the overhead light off and let the water pelt me, the better to wash away the accumulated poisons of the day. I stood in the steaming darkness, letting the waters melt the knots in my shoulders. The steam rose and thickened the air, sealing me in with my thoughts and my loneliness. How strange it had been to be Menken’s “date.” I wondered again if I had imagined that look he’d given me. Was the old satyr putting the moves on me? I compared him in my mind with Jim Erikson, the man I currently counted as my sexual distraction. The comparison was unfavorable, at least from a physical standpoint. Jim was young and fit, a man who worked with his hands.
Menken was—well, it was silly to even look at him in that way. So why was I doing it?
    I decided that my imagination had run away with me. Yes, that was it—Menken was only being Menken, urging me on with the job. A little shoulder squeeze here and there wasn’t anything unusual coming from an older man. It was a sign of encouragement—at most, affection. I would put it out of my mind.
    I shifted, letting the water find the tenderest part of my back. The part Jim had found, that time I let him touch me, let him ease my timidness, my uncertainty, until I was ready for him to kiss my neck, my hands, my face … but I had stopped him there. Why did I still resist him? A kinder soul I’d never met, and he didn’t lack for looks. He had a steady job, a nice house, and friends who loved him. So what was stopping me? Was it just that tiny fact that he lived so far away? Or was he just not Frank?
    Frank! Frank was married now, a father no less; no backing out for that boy, that was for sure. And I’d let Frank go, not the other way around. Why did I long for him now, and not then?
    Stop! Quick, think about something safer !
    My mind circled back around to