The Uninvited by Tim Wynne-Jones Read Free Book Online

closed his strong hands around the camera. It was red, a JVC HDD, with thirty gigabytes of drive. Laser-touch panel operation. He could guess what it was worth, a thousand bucks or so, and yet so small he could completely conceal it in his grip.
    So many toys,
he thought.
    He took a deep breath. Closed his eyes tight. If only he’d had this camera when she had changed by the car. If he closed his eyes, he could see her, almost entirely naked, the cheeks of her butt paler than her tanned legs.
    This changed things.
    What happened now?
    He would be patient. Patience was his greatest gift. He had read something about that in his mother’s book
The Artist’s Path.
“Above all else, be patient with yourself. The overzealous boater swamps his craft.”
    Cramer had felt the author was talking directly to him with that quote. But he knew she wasn’t talking about canoes. He understood what she meant, all right.
    Calmer now, he stared toward where the house on the snye stood, though he could not see it from here, anymore than they could see him. He tugged on his one gold earring. Tugged until it hurt.
    He wondered what they were up to in there. Was she a new girlfriend?
    He took a long deep breath.
    The wind picked up again and rocked him. From the look of what she had in the car, Mimi was planning on more than an overnight visit. So she was going to be around for a while. The thought made Cramer’s blood buzz in his veins.

CHAPTER SIX
    J AY AND MIMI STARED at each other for one very long uncomprehending moment, standing in the middle of his bedroom by the gaping hole in the floor.
    “Marc Soto, the artist,” she said.
    “Right.”
    Then Jay led her back to the kitchen to sit down.
    “I feel numb,” said Mimi. “Catatonic.”
    “Catatonia is characterized by rigidity of the muscles,” said Jay. “You’re as wobbly as Jell-O.”
    She stared at him. “I’m impressed,” she said.
    “Yeah, well, I’m not only anal; I’m a doctor’s son.”
    They sat for long moments at the table not quite able to look straight at each other. Embarrassed—at least he was. He had been entertaining
thoughts
about her, for Christ’s sake! Thoughts that now made him cringe, but only sort of. And that made it worse. Then a desperate idea occurred to him.
    “Your birth father?” he said.
    She nodded, frowning, as if she wished it weren’t true. Then she looked down again, suddenly demure, though that seemed the last word he would ever use to describe her.
    Then finally their eyes snagged, and he tried to say what neither of them had been actually able to articulate yet.
    “So you’re like … We’re … I’m your…”
    She laughed. “Nice try, Shakespeare,” she said.
    They looked hard at each other—looking for themselves in each other’s faces. That was what he was doing, anyway, and assumed she was doing the same.“You’ve got Marc’s forehead,” she said.
    “I wouldn’t know.”
    “Trust me.”
    “I’ve never laid eyes on the man,” he said.
    “Not even photographs?”
    He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. When I was a kid. He left before I was born.” The answer seemed inadequate to him, as if he should have cared more.
    She was staring at his face again, her eyes taking him in with an intimacy that made him a little breathless. “You’ve got the line of his jaw, too,” she added. “Or what it used to be like. Now his face has gone all kind of spongy.”
    Jay felt his jaw with his hand, realized how tightly clenched it was.
    “Are you okay?”
    She sounded so solicitous. And after a moment he was able to say yes, which was ridiculous, really, under the circumstances. Then his mind wandered back to the hidey-hole, and he must have glanced in the direction of the bedroom, because she stood up and reached for his hand again. He didn’t take it this time.
    Jay dropped down into the earthen room. The floor was compacted soil, as were the walls. The tunnel was only a meter high and only a couple of meters long. He