Playing Dead by Julia Heaberlin Read Free Book Online Page B

tonight?” she wanted to know. “Did you rent something really good?”
    “Yes.” I handed over
To Kill a Mockingbird
, rented out of a Redbox inside the hospital waiting room, and the chicken fried steak.
    “You’re the best aunt ever,” my nine-year-old niece declared, throwing her arms around my waist, then bouncing away as if her feet had springs, a prime-time commercial for joy. A knot rose in my throat. As soon as Maddie disappeared into the trailer with her loot, Sadie turned from stacking tools under the awning.
    “What’s wrong with your face, Tommie? You look like you’re about to cry.” Her eyes involuntarily fluttered, and I knew what was coming. “Why did you shoot a gun today?”
    This was one of the problems with Sadie. She’d inherited The Gift from Granny. The fluttering eyes, a couple of blinks that most people wouldn’t notice—signals of some kind of premonition or “feeling.”
    She sniffed. “I can smell it.”
    “Really?” I asked, not believing her. Sadie liked to acknowledge other people’s psychic abilities, but not her own, even though hers were, well, real.
    She opened the door of the trailer.
    “Let’s get settled first,” she said.
    It was like stepping into a walk-in refrigerator—a breathtaking blast of cold air. I threw the deadbolt behind us, Sadie looking at me quizzically.
    “It’s still light outside,” she said.
    I only nodded.
    The trailer gleamed, spotless, as usual. Maddie was already plopped on the floor in front of the TV, lifting the lid of the Styrofoam container. Sadie and I nestled into opposite sides of the red-leather booth in the corner of the kitchen and dug in.
    A granola friend, born somewhere north, once asked in disgust, “Why would any sane person want a greasy breaded crust around a slab of red meat?” If you had to ask, I told her, you’d never know.
    I bit into a perfectly fried piece of heaven and, keeping my voice low, gave Sadie an abbreviated five-minute version of Rosalina’s letter, my internet research into her brutal, mob-connected husband, the surprise visit at Daddy’s office from the man named Jack, the violent encounter in the garage. Once again, I left out the fact that Jack’s attackers knew who I was. There was only so much worry I thought I should dump on her.
    “Don’t tell Mama you took out that gun,” Sadie warned whenI’d finished, which was ridiculous because Mama didn’t even know who I was.
    “And clean it tomorrow.” For someone who lived out in the ether, Sadie was remarkably practical. Cleaning guns had always been a religion in our family, with Grandaddy as the head preacher. “Do you have the letter?”
    “Yes.” I gestured to my purse while peering into the depths of her Sub-Zero refrigerator. “There’s only one more Corona.”
    “Go for it.” She reached across the booth to my purse on the seat, pulling out the pink envelope, bent and creased from all its encounters with my obsessed fingers.
    I settled back into my seat with the beer, watching her eyes as they moved over words I’d memorized, reading along with her silently even though I couldn’t see the page, my stomach churning around the grease.
    Have you ever wondered about who you are?
    My mind finished the letter a few seconds ahead of her. I watched as she flipped over the front of the envelope, examined the return address and the postmark, then held it up to the light, illuminating a small square. She pulled out a tiny picture stuck inside the lining of the envelope. How had I missed that?
    A lovely, dark-haired woman stood on ground powdered with snow, an austere building looming behind her. In her arms, she cradled a small child. Sadie’s next words brought back that prickly feeling on my neck and a dread I hadn’t felt since I was little.
    “I want to tell you something, Tommie,” she said, and I felt the world I knew falling away.

    Sadie slid out of the booth, found the sponge at the sink, and began to scrub and rescrub