Superstition by Karen Robards Read Free Book Online Page A

more “ands” until she got there.
    “She drives just like you,” Uncle John said to Uncle Ham, in a tone that didn’t make it sound like a compliment. “Like Leonora, too. It’s that red hair. Does something to the brain, I’m convinced. Reckless as hell, the lot of you.”
    “Are not,” Uncle Ham replied, verbally bristling. Nicky gritted her teeth. Like many couples who had been together a long time, these two had a tendency to bicker. And tonight, of all nights, she was not in the mood to listen.
    “Quick-tempered, too,” Uncle John continued, undeterred, as Nicky hung a quick left onto South Causeway Road. The headlights sliced through the darkness as she turned, flashing past an expanse of knee-high scrub grass, a stand of bristly palmettos, and a pair of glow-in-the-dark eyes of what was possibly either a possum or a raccoon. The Old Taylor Place was nestled on a high point on the bank of Salt Marsh Creek, facing the mainland. It was, perhaps, a ten-minute drive from Twybee Cottage— if she kept to the speed limit, which she had no intention, under the circumstances, of doing. The only thing worse than having no ghosts at the séance would be having the program start with endless seconds of dead air because both the host—that would be her— and the star—that would be her mother—were late. The mere thought made her shudder and stomp the gas. The houses that whizzed past as she accelerated were newer, cheaper construction that had been clustered in the middle of the island, away from the now ruinously expensive waterfront. Lights were on inside most of them, giving this area the look of a miniature Christmas village.
    “Red hair’s a genetic marker. For all kinds of things,” Uncle John said. “Like decreased pain tolerance. I showed you that study. And—”
    “That study was a load of crap.” Uncle Ham’s voice was tight. “All having red hair means is you’ve got red hair. Anyway, at least our hair color is natural.”
    “Are you saying mine isn’t?”
    “All I’m saying is this: Clairol’s Summer Blonde.”
    “That package wasn’t mine, and you know it.”
    Livvy, meanwhile, had apparently been struggling with her seat belt the entire time they’d been in the car.
    “Ohmigod, it won’t fasten.” She let her breath out with a whoosh as though she’d been holding it. The sound was accompanied by the slither of the abandoned seat belt as it slid back into its moorings.“It doesn’t fit. I’m a cow—a whale. I could just die .”
    Startled out of her preoccupation by the very real pain in Livvy’s voice, Nicky glanced at her sister through the rearview mirror.
    “For God’s sake, Liv,” she said. “You’re seven months pregnant. You can’t expect to be a size six.”
    “That . . . that bitch looks like she’s about a size two,” Livvy wailed.
    “That bitch” was understood by everyone in the car to be the woman Livvy’s husband had left her for.
    “You’re prettier than she is,” Uncle Ham said, wrapping a comforting arm around her shoulders. “Even . . .”
    He broke off, apparently realizing the infelicitousness of what he’d been about to say. Livvy, no fool despite being supersized, supersensitive, and supercharged with hormones at present, didn’t seem to have any trouble filling in the blank.
    “Even if I’m huge ?” she guessed, on a note of quivering despair.
    “You’re not huge,” Uncle Ham, Uncle John, and Nicky all said in instant, loyal unison.
    “I am, I am .” Livvy burst into noisy tears. “I’m big as a damned stadium, and you all know it.”
    A stop sign emerged out of the darkness. Nicky saw it, and the car proceeding through the crossroad it heralded just in time. She hit the brakes. The Honda screeched to a shuddering stop.
    “We want to find ghosts, not be them,” Uncle John said after the briefest of moments, raising his voice to be heard over the sound of Livvy’s sobs. Ignoring him, and her sister, and everything except