She's Not There by P. J. Parrish Read Free Book Online Page A

and slowly sat up, her body in knots from being curled into a ball on the bus seat all night. She pulled her purple plastic glasses out of the seatback pocket, put them on and looked across the aisle. The old man and the boy were gone. The bus was empty.
    She looked out the window. The bus was parked in front of a small Greyhound station that looked like it might once have been a drive-in restaurant before it had been repainted red, white, and blue. Passengers were standing around smoking cigarettes and drinking from Styrofoam cups.
    Picking up the duffel, she went out into the bright sunshine. The bus driver was coming toward the bus carrying a silver travel mug when she stopped him.
    “Where are we?” she asked.
    “Brunswick, Georgia, ma’am,” he said. “You’ve got about twenty minutes for a breakfast break and then we’re pulling out.”
    She touched his arm as he started to board. “There was an elderly black man traveling with a little boy,” she said. “Do you know where they are?”
    “They got off last night at Daytona,” the driver said over his shoulder as he climbed on the bus.
    Amelia looked around the narrow street lined with old live oak trees, the twisted branches netted with Spanish moss. It was warm, and the humid breeze had a pleasing briny tang to it, as if there were fishing boats nearby. Across the street was a small white brick building with a sign above the door that read R ED B ONE C AFÉ .
    Clutching the duffel close, she walked toward the café. Inside, it was a sliver of a diner just wide enough for four red vinyl booths along the windows and a Formica counter with six old-fashioned round stools. It smelled of burnt coffee and bacon. She slid onto a stool next to an old man in overalls, eyed the apple pies in the glass case, and ordered a coffee and toast.
    The coffee was strong and peppery, a taste she recognized as chicory, and she had to douse it with milk. But the toast, limp with butter, was delicious, and she wolfed it down.
    God, she was so hungry.
    And dirty. She needed a shower.
    A blast of a horn made her look to the window. The passengers were filing back onto the bus. The waitress came over to refill her coffee and Amelia started to pull out some money but then paused. Even the smallest movement made her ribs ache, and she felt fragile, as if her body were made of glass. She knew she couldn’t get back on that bus.
    “Is there a hotel nearby?” she asked the waitress.
    “Well, there’s a Motel 6 near the mall. But that’s way out by the interstate.”
    “Is there anything here in town?”
    “Not really.”
    The waitress was staring at her in a way that reminded Amelia of the redheaded woman back in the pawnshop—intense curiosity coupled with an odd, almost protective tenderness. Amelia resisted the urge to touch the gauze covering her chin.
    “Okay, I know one place you could stay, maybe,” the waitress said. She leaned over the counter and pointed out the window. “That’s Gloucester Street. Turn right there and head through downtown. Turn left on Union Street and look for an old yellow house with a big wraparound porch. You can’t miss it. The woman who lives there is a friend of mine. She takes in boarders sometimes. Her name is Hannah. Tell her Missy sent you.”
    The bus was just pulling away when Amelia emerged from the café. She watched it disappear and then started toward Gloucester. She passed through a small downtown of old red brick buildings that had been restored as cafés and shops. The lampposts were hung with American flags and baskets of geraniums. There was a sign in a real estate office window advertising tickets to a Christmas Eve mass, and a man on a ladder was stringing up Christmas lights.
    Christmas? It didn’t feel like Christmas here. But she wasn’t sure what Christmas really felt like. She walked on, the sun warm on her face.
    Was she an impulsive person? She didn’t have any idea. But her decision to stay here in this strange