The Lost by Jack Ketchum Read Free Book Online

too.
    “Okay. Just let me get some shoes on.”
    She slipped into her new leather sandals and walked down the stairs and the length of the hall through the living room. Etta walked along behind her. The living room was cavernous and practically empty. An overstuffed chair, a sofa, a table her dad had built years ago in California and an end table with an ashtray by the chair. No paintings on the walls, no photos or mementos over the fireplace. Her parents’ homes had been that way for as long as she could remember. Her dad was president of the First National Bank of Sparta now and he still lived like a monk. She was used to it but anybody else usually thought it strange. She guessed it was.
    But they didn’t know the reason. She did.
    She opened the screen door to the porch—also unfurnished except for three aluminum beach chairs and a plastic table with a see-through top and one lonely spider plant dangling by a chain from the ceiling—and went down the stairs across the cobbled walk to the shop. The day was warm and smelled of fresh-mown grass.
    Her father was at the workbench with his back to her. He had a plank of pinewood in the tail vise and was working its edge with an electric sander, a sound that always reminded her of a huge drunken bee. Dust bloomed off the wood. It covered his hands and forearms and sprinkled his dark curly hair.
    “That you, hon?”
    Whatever had happened to her father’s sinuses in Korea had not effected his hearing. His hearing was amazing.
    “Hi, dad.”
    He turned and grinned at her and turned off the sander and released the paper clamps on both sides of it, tossed the used sandpaper on the concrete floor in front of him and inserted a fresh piece cut to size. Then he put the sander on the workbench and brushed down his hands and forearms and the front of his T-shirt. He still was covered with the stuff.
    “I won’t ask you for a hug.”
    “You better not.”
    “Got a minute?”
    “Sure. I guess.”
    “Let’s go out to the porch. I could use a glass of lemonade.”
    She followed him back.
    “Etta?”
    “Uh-huh?”
    She was in the kitchen. Katherine could hear her turn off the water in the sink.
    “Could you bring us out some lemonade?”
    “Sure can. Be right out”
    They sat and her father sighed. He brushed off his slacks. The muscles jumped in his forearms. He was a big man and his body was tight and toned as a teenager’s despite the desk job. It was the workshop that kept him fit. He was always building things and giving them away. Half the people they knew back in San Francisco had a table or chair of his and some had two or three. He was a perfectionist so he kept almost none of what he finished. One table, one end table and the desk in his study and a chair. That was it.
    “Next weekend,” he said, ‘I’m flying back to see your mom. Want to come?”
    “No.”
    “You sure?”
    “Why would I want to do that?”
    “She’s your mom, Kath. It’d only be the weekend but I thought we could look up a few friends too. As long as we’re out there. You could go see Deke.”
    “You don’t like Deke.”
    “I don’t have to like him anymore. He’s there, we’re here. I guess you could say absence makes the heart grow fonder.”
    “Very funny, dad.”
    Etta arrived with two tall glasses of lemonade. She put coasters in front of them and served them off the tray. Etta made lemonade from scratch, grating the rind down fine and mixing it with sugar and a half cup of water, stirring it into a paste and letting it sit overnight in the refrigerator before combining it with more water and the juice the following morning. It was tart and sweet and aromatic. Over ice on a hot summer day there was nothing better.
    “Enjoy,” she said and disappeared back into the kitchen.
    Katherine sipped her drink. “You go, dad,” she said. “I’m not interested.”
    “The thing is, Dr. Greenberg says she’s gotten a lot worse. That she’s almost completely nonverbal now. Says