Wild Child by Molly O'Keefe Read Free Book Online Page B

knocked slightly on the door before walking away. He got three steps before he stopped and turned back around.
    “You want to go see a movie or something?” he asked.
    That made her stop reading.
    “What?”
    “A movie, get some ice cream …” He shrugged.
    “It’s poker night,” she said.
    “I know, but … I’d skip it if you wanted to go see a movie.”
    She looked at him for a long moment, and in her blue eyes, so like their mother’s, he saw his sister and a total stranger. Gwen was a genius, reading at age three, completing complicated algebra problems in grade five. She’d finished the entire curriculum of her sophomore year of high school, including calculus and zoology, during two and a half months of summer school.
    For about a year when she was twelve he’d been slightly scared of her, even went to Memphis twice a month so both of them could see counselors. The counselor he’d seen had told him to make sure Gwen was still a kid, that she did kid stuff.
    So in between her reading the classics and taking online physics classes at the University of Tennessee, he took her go-carting, as well as mini-putting every weekend. He went fishing with her and to the movies. He invited kids her age, tried his best to make sure she had friends.
    He’d worked hard at it, poured himself into it the wayhe had law school. Normalizing his sister was a job, and it had been all-consuming.
    Those, he realized now with a bittersweet pang, had been the best years.
    “No thanks,” she said, and bent back over her book.
    He sighed, slightly defeated, slightly angry. Always baffled. “Then I guess I’ll talk to you later,” he said, and as he turned again for the hallway, Gwen shifted and he saw what she was reading. Wild Child . Monica’s purple eyes stared up at him from the author photo.
    Gwen glanced up and saw what he was looking at before he could pretend not to be.
    Without a word his sister pulled the book into bed with her, hiding it in her lap, another secret to keep from him.
    Monica searched through the pink dog carrier’s gazillion pockets for Reba’s leash. She found packets of dog treats. Hair ties and lip gloss. Gum. Two cigarettes. From the side pocket she pulled a long silver strip of condoms.
    “Oh, Jenna,” she sighed, fondness a bittersweet lump in her throat. She tossed the condoms aside to the bed, but a white note floated out onto her shoe. When she picked it up she caught a glimpse of Jenna’s handwriting, and it was so unexpected, she couldn’t breathe.
    Monica , the note said in Jenna’s girlish print, and the grief bit so deep, she had to sit or fall to her knees. Don’t let the haters win. And that includes you. You’re special and you deserve to be happy. It goes so fast. Take happiness where you can find it .
    Ruined, she sat there staring at the note; the circles Jenna dotted her i ’s with seemed so profound. A note from beyond the grave. About her sex life.
    Only Jenna. Only Jenna would care.
    Maybe in a few weeks she could laugh, but the bestshe could do right now was not bawl and put the condoms in the drawer of the bedside table. Where they would collect dust.
    Wiping her eyes, she stood again and dug until she found the small pink bedazzled leash in the side pocket of the dog carrier and advanced on Reba, who quickly dove under the bed.
    “Come on, you can’t live in this hotel room. I have work to do,” she muttered, then got down on her knees to fish the dog out.
    “It’s a walk, Reba,” she said as she grabbed the animal under her strange, hairless belly. “Not a forced march. We need exercise. Sunlight.” She clipped the leash onto Reba’s collar, grabbed her purse with her notebook and pen, and headed for the door.
    After that terrible run-in with Jackson last night, she’d come home and, fueled by anger and that four-hour nap, wasted several hours on bad TV, before finally falling asleep near dawn. She’d slept nearly twelve hours.
    So now she was wide