Sweet Water by Anna Jeffrey Read Free Book Online

name and she hadn’t told him hers. She didn’t even feel embarrassed for breaking down in his presence. He was a stranger and she would never see him again.
     
    Chapter 5
    By nine o’clock, Marisa had finished the nightly ritual of helping her mother bathe, swallow her pills and get into bed. The nighttime silence hung around her like a heavy black cape. With no one to talk to, it was easy to feel restless and down in the dumps. She could think of no one to call for a time-consuming chat. In the world she left behind when she came here, she’d had acquaintances, though few friends. She had lost touch with them months back.
    If she went to bed now, she wouldn’t sleep. Lying alone in the dark would only give rise to dark thoughts, which were already blacker than the bottom of a mineshaft.
    She kept a stack of crossword puzzle books in the dining-area hutch, but tonight she couldn’t make herself sit in the quiet and play with words. TV’s offering promised to only depress her more. The walls of the fourteen foot wide mobile home seemed to be closing in on her, so she opted for the great outdoors.
    A wooden deck spanned half the length of the trailer and a pair of aged oak rocking chairs sat near the front door. Before going out, she switched on the front porch light and checked for a rattlesnake. April might be early for them to be out, but it wasn’t impossible. With her luck, one could be passing by and seeking heat on the planks of the wooden deck that had been warmed by the sun all day.
    Satisfied no viper awaited her, she slipped into a coat, turned off the porch light and went outside, into the night’s embrace. Technically, it was spring, but Agua Dulce lay on the eastern shoulders of the Rocky Mountains at an elevation of three thousand feet. The nighttime temperatures dropped into the low fifties and would for a few more weeks.
    A zillion stars hung against the clear, velvet-black sky and a three-quarter moon washed the landscape with silver. Marisa plopped into one of the rocking chairs, staring up at the moon’s oval
    shape and ethereal color and thinking that nothing but that lunar surface could be more silent than this part of Texas at night. In a town of ten people, clustered in the western reaches of a huge county with a total population of ninety-seven, only coyotes and a few desperate crickets made night noises. Even the highway was quiet and dark after nine o’clock.
    As a child, she had been frightened by the vastness of the silence and the density of the utter darkness. As a teenager, she had been bored by the desert ambience. Tonight, even with her heart heavy and her future bleak, she wondered how she had lived away from Agua Dulce for fifteen years. This arid, remote corner of Texas was the only place that felt like home. And, God help her, she found comfort in the isolation that had shaped her childhood.
    She clicked on the radio anchoring a TV tray beside the chair and tuned in on a Vince Gill song. “Someday.” A song of loneliness, yet hope that someday the right one would come along. Boy, could she relate. Vince’s fine tenor voice in the chilly dark air seemed to crystallize all the wretchedness that simmered inside her and she pondered why had she never been able to hang onto a long-lasting relationship with the opposite sex. Woody was just one more example of her rotten history with men.
    A couple of years before coming back to Agua Dulce she had been engaged. Her intended’s company had worn thin as he became increasingly content to let her pay the bills. The infamous last straw had come when he used her MasterCard without her knowledge and bought a Jet Ski. She had spent two years paying off the balance, faithfully sending a money order every month.
    And it was a good thing the payoff had taken no more time than that, because she sure couldn’t afford to make payments on a credit card balance now.
    She had not once anticipated her present circumstances. At eighteen, she had