The Wreck by Marie Force Read Free Book Online Page A

getting past
her fear. Now she knew that wasn’t the case.
    “Are you okay?” Brian asked, his face
soft with concern and love.
    With a small nod and a forced smile, she
let him help her up. She hated that he was so worried about her. He’d lost his
brother. She should be helping him through that, not giving him more cause for
concern. Getting up, she brushed the grass off her shorts and took a seat at
the picnic table.
    Everyone else sat down and dug in.
    Still feeling shaky, Carly pushed the
food around on her plate while the others ate in subdued silence. She looked up
to find her parents watching her with concern written all over faces that she
could now see had aged since she had last looked closely. That, too, was her
fault.
    Brian reached for her hand under the
table and gave it a reassuring squeeze.
    Carly noticed Caren glaring at her from
across the table.
    “What’s wrong, Caren?” their mother
asked.
    “Nothing.”
    “Clearly, something’s on your mind,”
Carol said. “Why don’t you spit it out so we can get back to enjoying our day?”
    “Is that what we’re doing? Enjoying our
day?”
    “Caren,” Steve warned.
    “It’s okay for you to go on and on every
day about what she’s doing to our family?” Caren shot back at her father. “I thought
maybe we’d get one day off from Carly and her problems , but I guess
that’s not going to happen.”
    “The fire scared her,” Brian said in
Carly’s defense.
    “ Everything scares her!” Caren
pushed her plate aside and stood. “I’m so sick and tired of having to tiptoe
around her like she’s made of glass and might break. No one in our family died! Why are we acting like someone did?” To Carly, she added, “Brian
lost his brother , but you don’t see him going around like the walking
dead, wanting everyone to fall all over him.”
    “That’s enough , Caren,” Carol said
in a tone that left no room for argument.
    Carly got up and went inside. Before the
screen door slammed closed behind her, she heard Craig say, “Way to go, Caren.”
    “Shut up, Craig! You don’t live here. You
don’t know what it’s been like.”
    Carly heard Brian following her as she
went up to her room.
    Sitting on the edge of the bed, he
reached for her hand.
    She propped her chin on her knees.
    “Don’t worry about Caren. She was blowing
off steam.”
    From out in the street, the whir of
bottle rockets filled the air, reminding Carly of another Fourth of July years
earlier when Pete had shot off rockets at the lake.
    “Remember Pete and the firecrackers?”
    Carly’s eyes widened with surprise as she
nodded. She had forgotten how often they’d had the same thoughts.
    Brian got up, went over to her desk, and
picked up a pad. He grabbed a pen and returned to the bed. He plopped the pad
down in front of her and held out the pen. “Talk to me.”
    She took the pen. Nibbling on the cap, she
studied his handsome face. Usually by the beginning of July his skin was tanned
to golden brown, but not this year. Leaning over the pad, she wrote the one
thing she had missed saying to him the most: “Carly Holbrook loves Brian
Westbury.” She drew a heart around the words like she had for years on every
notebook she owned.
    He smiled. “Now tell me something I don’t
know.”
    She wrote, “I’m not doing this on
purpose. I want to talk, but I can’t.”
    “I know that, too, honey. I never thought
for a minute that you were doing it on purpose.”
    “But you’ve been mad at me.”
    He shook his head. “I’m mad at life
lately.”
    “Me, too.”
    He held her gaze for a long moment.
“There’s a new lead in the accident investigation.”
    Carly raised her eyebrows.
    He told her about the man he had seen in
the road a couple of months before the accident and how he had forgotten about
it. “My dad started looking into it and found that two other drivers reported
seeing someone lurking on the side of Tucker Road. He hasn’t found anyone who
saw him the