She Sins at Midnight by Whitney Dineen Read Free Book Online

continued, “Enough about me, darling. What in the hell have you been up to?”
    Lila took another step back with thoughts of jumping back into the SUV and returning to the airport. This was not the safe, secure, never changing environment that she planned to retreat to in hopes of nurturing her waning sanity. This was Ginger from Gilligan’s island meets Captain Blood and she hadn’t even walked through the front door yet. But before Lila could make a break for it, Bitsy grabbed two of her suitcases and bounded toward the front door like an overeager golden retriever puppy.
    Lila hesitantly followed. As soon as she put one foot over the threshold, she heard her father holler out, “Hurry up, Baby. I just popped a little blue pill!”
    Under her breath, Lila mumbled, “What in all that’s holy is going on here?”
    Her mom had the good grace to blush (but only slightly) and yelled back, “I’m on my way up, Tiger!”
    Before he could answer, “Me too!” Lila told Bitsy that she was going to go over to Jilly’s house so that they could have some privacy. In the weird alternate universe she found herself in, her mother thanked her, then ran up the stairs like a sex-starved nineteen year old sailor on shore leave.
    Lila was back in her rented wheels in less than five minutes after arriving home. She sat still for a moment desperately trying to collect her thoughts when she realized that she was famished. At 3:45 Chicago time, she calculated, it was way past lunch time in L.A. Maybe Jilly would make her a sandwich. On her way down the driveway she started to long for peanut butter and jelly. By the time she was down the road, she had amended that to grilled cheese and potato chips; with homemade chocolate chip cookies for dessert. Thinking about food always seemed to help her planet resume its normal rotation. Regrettably, she was so engrossed in the thought of her impending comfort that she wasn’t paying close attention to the road.
    The houses in her parent’s neighborhood were situated on two acre lots. Because the land hadn’t been developed within an inch of its life, deer still roamed freely and even occasionally darted across the road as one had just decided to do. Lila barely had time to slam on her breaks before she collided with the small doe. Fortunately, she missed it. But in swerving she hit a muddy patch. She wound up sliding right into the swampy marsh that abutted the golf course of The North Hills Country Club.
    Luckily for Lila, she was behind the wheel of an SUV, or so she thought. Yet the more she gunned the gas to get out of the spot she was in, the deeper she sank into the mire. Finally, giving up her losing battle at freedom, she decided to walk across the street to see if someone in a nearby house could give her a hand. The thought of calling her dad briefly occurred, until she remembered the reason she was on her way to Jilly’s to begin with. Her parental units were otherwise occupied, in the middle of the day.
    Lila opened the driver’s side door and realized that the SUV had slid even farther into the marsh than she originally thought. She was at least five feet from terra firma, and it looked like the only way to dry land was going to involve jumping. Before remembering that she was never much of a long jumper, Lila took off her sandals, grabbed the hem of her skirt and proceeded to bodily launch herself across the marsh into the most spectacular belly flop ever. Stunned into immobility, she lay still for a moment as the scunge completely saturated through to her skin. It crept up her legs and soaked right through her dress all the way into her bra and panties. Lila couldn’t believe how she wound up in such a ridiculous position. But then she remembered that she hadn’t really come home. She had arrived in an alternate universe where nothing was the way it was supposed to be. She fantasized that somewhere in a dimension not too far away, another Lila Montgomery was being welcomed by