Swallowing Stones by Joyce McDonald Read Free Book Online Page A

the community pool.
    h e had been right about painting over graffiti. He and the two other male lifeguards spent the day rolling coats of thick white paint over the men’s locker room walls, while the three female lifeguards painted the women’s locker room.
    All that morning he was haunted by the thought of trying to eat another meal with his family while they speculated about Charlie Ward’s killer. So during his lunch break Michael called home, knowing full well he’d get the answering machine, and told his mother not to expect him for dinner. Then, because he realized he needed a reason, he added that he was spending the night at Joe’s. But even as he said this, he knew that Joe Sadowski’s was the last place he would go. Because, like it or not, his best friend had become a part of what Michael so desperately wanted to forget.
    i t had stopped raining by the time he finished work, although a steamy mist hung over everything, blocking out the sun. Michael walked to the library, planning to read the most recent newspapers. He had forgotten it was Friday night. The library closed at five. For a long time he sat on the front steps, wondering where to go next.
    Finally he bought a Coke and a salami-and-tomato on pumpernickel at the Corner Deli, and ate at one of the publicpicnic tables near the community pool. When he looked at his watch again, it was only six.
    For a while he walked around town. Then he wandered down two more blocks, until he came to the end of Main Street, and turned left. He headed up the hill, passing several old Victorian homes, then entered a side street. That was when he suddenly realized where he’d been going all along. For there, across the street from him, stood a large blue-gray house with elegant white scrollwork. Jenna Ward’s house. He realized then that it hadn’t been just idle curiosity that had prompted him to look up her address in the phone book three nights ago. He had needed to come here.
    Michael sat down on the curb. Even through the heavy haze, he could see the neatly manicured lawn and the rows of thorny bushes drooping under the burden of fat wet roses. Everything looked still and misty, as if it had been stopped in time. There was something ghostlike about it.
    He shivered, feeling the damp curb through his cutoffs. Part of his backside rested on wet grass. But he could not bring himself to leave, even though he had no idea why he had come.
    He wondered if the family belonged to the community pool, then decided they didn’t. If they did, he would have recognized Jenna; he was sure of it. Maybe they had their own pool. Judging from the house and the part of town they lived in, it seemed a reasonable assumption. Michael decided they probably spent at least part of their summers on Martha’s Vineyard, or Nantucket, or someplace like that.
    When he stood up to keep his pants from getting any wetter, he noticed he was only a few yards from the front of a church. If he sat on the stairs, his presence would seem less obvious to anyone in the neighborhood who might notice. So he positioned himself on the top step, resting his back against theheavy oak doors. And there he kept his vigil until the streetlights blinked on.
    t he moon was almost full that night, but Michael did not notice until he came to an unlit road. The blue-white glow spilled down through the leaves, and the trees cast their inky shadows across the road. It was a quiet street, one he had never been on before. He kept walking, because he had already been all over town, and because there was nothing else to do and nowhere to go.
    When he reached the end of the road, he saw, in the moonlight, a Cape Cod house, small and neat and white. A name plaque dangled from a post by the split-rail fence. The letters burned into his tired eyes, forming the name
Ruggerio
. He wondered if this could possibly be Amy’s home.
    Somehow he had never pictured Amy living in a house, although he didn’t know why that should be. But