The Story Keeper by Lisa Wingate Read Free Book Online

Editorial team powwow at eleven thirty to line up the nonfiction attack for pub board Monday, just in case you didn’t get the message.”
    “Thanks, I didn’t.” The words were slightly breathless. I felt strangely out of body, not at all myself. My heart hammered against my chest, caught in the instinctive flight response that an uncertain upbringing leaves behind. I felt like Sarra, crouched beneath the cabin floor, afraid I’d be beaten if caught.
    Roger cast a quizzical glance toward my laptop case, thecomputer still tucked inside. Pretty obvious that no e-mail had been checked this morning. “Dark in here. Grabbing a nap?”
    “Got caught up in something.” Caught up was a mild description. In reality, I was dying to open the folder again, read the rest, find out if Sarra escaped Brown Drigger and his dogs.
    “Anything good?” Roger pushed the door open wider and advanced a half step into my office.
    “Oh, who knows.” The folder suddenly felt like a bomb again. I slid my hands over it almost unconsciously, felt the ticking beneath my fingers. Tick, tick, tick. “Overhead light wouldn’t come on when I got here. But I kind of like using the gooseneck lamp, anyway. It gives the place an authentic feel.”
    “You always were an old-fashioned type.”
    “Compared to you, everyone’s old-fashioned.” I rolled my eyes, trying to let the comments slide off. Roger considered anyone with morals, sexual or otherwise, old-fashioned. It still amazed me that he didn’t find life under George Vida’s old-school system way too confining. I’d always had the impression of George Vida as a highly moral man, principled in the way of 1950s print journalism, but then again, I only knew his public image.
    Maybe there were reasons why Roger was so comfortable here, but I hoped not.
    A smooth grin answered. “Don’t miss Mitch’s meeting. She doesn’t like it when people miss her meetings.”
    Despite the source, I didn’t doubt the validity of the advice. The head of our nonfiction editorial team, Mitchell Lee, was a matter-of-fact woman with little tolerance for incompetents or slough-offs. The fiction team, under Chris Singer, was a looser group. They went out for drinks, attended book launch parties if the venue and the schmoozing were good, and sometimes evenvacationed together. I’d been invited to tag along last night but hadn’t gone. I didn’t want to give Mitch the impression that I was sniffing after other opportunities. For now, I needed to concentrate my efforts where I was.
    Looking back at the folder on my desk, I considered its possible origins. It was fiction, but something about it felt so very real. The description of Brown Horne Drigger’s home, the details of butchering hogs and making sausage by hand, the mention of Sarra’s Melungeon ancestry, even her use of Aginisi , a Cherokee word for grandmother , brought Rand and Sarra to life. Eerily so. There was a familiarity to the piece, and I couldn’t decide if it was just that the subject matter scratched old memories or if something in the author’s voice or style strummed a tune I’d heard before. I wanted to put a finger on it, and it seemed that I should be able to, yet I couldn’t. That taunted me almost as much as the mystery of the manuscript itself. No author’s name, no header or footer on the pages, the return address torn from the envelope, the postmark faded almost beyond reading. No submission letter. If there had been one, it’d long since been lost.
    What was this thing?
    The questions played a tantalizing game, like voices calling from behind moss-covered rocks and deep mountain hollows, as ours once had when we slipped away to play games of fox and hen or anty over around the old barn.
    Anty.
    Over .
    Over she comes . . .
    The calls of my sisters whispered now, their high-pitched laughter painting a mist of light and dark, the murky shades of regret.
    The whispering stopped as I put the envelope in my deskdrawer, a