A Place Called Home Read Online Free PDF Page B

times Kathy and Gabe pressed me into asking you out? Right now I’m thanking God you always said no.”

Chapter 2
    The phone was ringing as Mitch let himself in the kitchen through the garage entrance. He tossed his keys on the counter and watched them skid across the surface and land on the floor while he made a grab for the phone. “Hello.”
    “Mitchell. This is your mother.”
    “Mum, you don’t have to identify yourself. No one else calls me Mitchell.”
    “Well, I don’t know why. It’s a perfectly good name.”
    “Sissy name, Mum. Dad tried to tell you.” Predictably another voice immediately joined the conversation. Trust his mother to have him on speaker.
    “I sure did, son. Wanted to name you Max. You’d have been the toughest kid on the block with a name like that.”
    Chuckling, Mitch went through the contortions of removing his leather jacket without taking the phone from his ear. “I did okay for myself.” He hooked the jacket over the back of a chair and went to the refrigerator. “Who else is with you?” He surveyed the contents of the fridge.
    “Mitchell, I put a pan of lasagna in your refrigerator.”
    He grabbed a Corona. “I’m looking at it now. Thanks. The kids will appreciate it. Can you believe it? They’re getting tired of pizza.”
    “They need fruits and vegetables, dear.”
    “Hey, I ordered pizza with pineapple and green peppers.”
    Farther in the background another voice chimed in. “That’s great, Mitch! You’re a credit to your gender!”
    Mitch frowned. “Is that you, Amy?”
    “Sure is.”
    “Jeez, Mum, who all is listening in?”
    “Just your sister and your dad. Oh, and Mrs. Talbot. She’s here with my Avon order. I told her I had to call you before the twins got home from school.”
    Great, Mitch thought. “Hi, Mrs. Talbot.”
    “Hello, Mitch. I saw your cartoon today. Naughty, but oh, so funny.”
    “Thanks. Mum?”
    “Yes?”
    He took a long pull on his Corona. “Did you have something you wanted to tell me about besides the lasagna?”
    “Well, no. I wanted to hear what happened at Wayne’s. Was Thea there? Emilie said she might not be at the meeting.”
    So Emilie had passed Wayne’s message along after all, only to his mother. Mitch took another swallow. Apparently there were some glitches with the ponytail express. “She was there. With Avery Childers. He must have cost her a small fortune. His suit wasn’t exactly off the rack.”
    “I suppose you wore jeans.”
    “Yep.” He knew his mother was sighing even if he couldn’t hear it over his sister’s laughter. “Anything else you want to know?”
    “That’s not funny.”
    “All right. But I can’t tell you much because the bus will be coming any minute.” It was now almost second nature for Mitch to meet the school bus at the corner. A few days after Case and Grant started back to school they forgot about going to Mitch’s house and got off the bus at their old stop. No one was used to the new routine, including him. Lost in inking a cartoon, working against a deadline, it was only when Emilie came in the door forty minutes later that Mitch realized the twins weren’t around. Admitting that he didn’t know where her brothers were was not a position he wanted to be in again, and he knew he never wanted to see that look on Emilie’s face a second time. Mitch still didn’t know if he’d ever be able to make it up to her. It was not an auspicious beginning for them. Case and Grant, though, were none the worse for their experience. They’d found a spare key their parents kept under a terra-cotta pot on the porch and gone inside. The cable hadn’t been disconnected yet, and when Mitch and Emilie and the police found them, the boys were watching Nickelodeon. If it had been MTV, Sergeant Wolliver would have probably taken Emilie’s complaint that her uncle Mitch didn’t know what he was doing more seriously. It was true enough.
    “Is Thea taking the children?” his mother