Within Arm's Reach by Ann Napolitano Read Free Book Online

You’re not even making an effort.”
    She throws this at me as if it is the greatest of crimes, and I know that to her it is. But there is something inside me that keeps me from reaching out, keeps my wheels from turning in the direction they should. That something is rock solid and unmovable, and it sits on my chest. It makes me sink down on the couch, sink down in the grass beside Eddie’s still body, sink down under the heaviness of the air in this room.
    “Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?” There is a note of disgust in Kelly’s voice.
    I don’t have anything to say. I wish I did.
    “Fine.” She stands up, her thin body a collection of sharp angles. “I need to call my mother, then, and Lila, to find out what’s really going on.”

GRACIE

    I know I have to tell Joel. I have to. (A) He’s the father, and (B) even if I broke up with him right now, he lives in Ramsey. He’s a local volunteer firefighter. He would find out two minutes after I started showing. There is no town gossip that gets past firemen. You’d be surprised to hear those big burly men talk dirt. And Weber, Joel’s best friend on the force, who swears he’s psychic, has been giving me weird looks lately. I’ve actually started keeping the fat slob’s favorite brand of beer in our refrigerator so that when he stops by the house with Joel, he’s happy and distracted.
    In any case, I know I don’t have much time. I try to tell Joel when he spends the night, but I end up feeding him instead. I hand him a Heineken when he walks through the door, because I know he likes to have a few bottles at the end of the day. Over the past two weeks, I have made two meat lasagnas, a key lime pie, a roasted chicken, seafood risotto, and turkey sausage chili. I realize, as I cook, that I am making my favorite foods, not his. We haven’t been together long enough for me to know his favorites. Or maybe most women know their boyfriends’ tastes by the four-month point. Maybe I should have asked.
    When I serve him the seafood risotto at eleven o’clock one night, I study his face to see if he likes it. He seems to like everything. Joel is very agreeable. He is very nice. He is someone I was probably a few weeks from breaking up with, before this whole pregnancy thing happened. He’s not in love with me, which is fine, but he is in love with someone else. He is not even close to being over his last girlfriend, a loudmouthed redhead named Margaret. He’s actively terrified of her. When he and I are out in public, Joel is always looking over his shoulder, checking to make sure she’s not in sight. I wonder if she used to hit him. He denies it, but she must have done something pretty terrible to make him this nervous. Sometimes, while we’re having sex—and the sex is pretty damn good, which is probably the best explanation for why we’ve stayed together for four months—I catch him glancing over at the bedroom door with that same look of fear on his face, as if he fully expects her to walk through any minute.
    It may be that the spying Joel does in his other job has helped make him paranoid. He is the assistant to Ramsey’s mayor, Vince Carrelli, which sounds impressive, but Joel got the job because his dad is on the town council. He took the position because it gives him the flexibility to devote most of his time to the fire department. What he does for Mayor Carrelli is check up on activities around town. Joel drives by the local parks and keeps an eye on the high school (which is conveniently right across the street from the fire department), the alley behind the 7-Eleven where most of the small-town drug deals take place, and various construction sites. He runs into my father frequently on his rounds, as many of the construction sites in town are my father’s. Mayor Carrelli also owns and works part-time in the barbershop on Main Street, so between the gossip in the barbershop and the information Joel comes up with, the mayor is able