After the Night Read Online Free PDF Page B

reading, not wanting to waste any of this time to herself, but she was so sleepy, she couldn’t make sense of the words any longer, and wasting the words seemed a lot worse than wasting the time. Sighing, she got up and returned the book to its hiding place, then turned out the light. She crawled between the threadbare sheets, the frame of the cot squeaking under her weight, and blew out the candle.
    Perversely, in the sudden darkness, sleep wouldn’t come. She shifted restlessly on the thin cot, drifting in a half daydream, half doze, reliving the strained, shadowed romance in the book she’d been reading. She knew instantly when Russ and Nicky drove up, close to one o’clock. They staggered into the house, making no effort to be quiet, laughing uproariously at something their drinking buddies had done that night. Both of them were still underage, but a little thing like a law had never gotten in the way whenever a Devlin wanted to do something. The boys couldn’t go to roadhouses, but there were plenty of other ways they could get booze, and they knew them all. Sometimes they stole it, sometimes they paid other people to buy it for them, in which case they had stolen the money. Neither of them had a job, part-time or otherwise, because no one would hire them. It was well known the Devlin boys would steal you blind.
    "OF Poss," Nicky was giggling. "Boooooom!"
    It was enough to send Russ into drunken whoops. From the incoherent fragments she heard, evidently "Or Poss," whoever that was, had been scared by something that had made a loud booming noise. The boys seemed to think it was hilarious, but they probably wouldn’t remember it in the morning.
    They woke Scottie, and she heard him grunting, but he didn’t cry, so she remained in bed. She wouldn’t have liked traipsing into the boys’ bedroom in her nightgown – in fact, she would have gone cold with dread – but she would have done it if they’d scared Scottie and made him cry. But Nicky said, "Shaddup and go back to sleep," and Scottie was quiet again. After a few minutes, they were all asleep, the chorus of snores rising and falling in the darkness.
    Half an hour later, Jodie came home. She was quiet, or at least tried to be, tiptoeing through the shack with her shoes in hand. The stench of beer and sex came with her, all yellow and red and brown in a noxious swirl. She didn’t bother to undress but flopped down on her cot and heaved a deep sigh, almost like a purr.
    "You awake, Faithie?" she asked after a moment, her voice slurred.
    "Yeah."
    "Thought you were. You should’ve come with me. Had fun, lots of fun." The last sentence was deep with sensuality. "You don’t know what you’re missin’, Faithie."
    "Then I don’t miss it, do I?" Faith whispered, and Jodie giggled.
    Faith dozed lightly, listening for Renee’s car so she would know everyone was safely home. Twice she came awake with a start, wondering if Renee had managed to come in without waking her, and got up to look out the window to see if her car was there. It wasn’t.
    Renee didn’t come home at all that night.

Three
     
    "Daddy didn’t come home last night."
    Monica’s face was tight with misery as she stood at the window of the dining room. Gray continued eating his breakfast; there wasn’t much that could curb his appetite. So that was why Monica was up so early, since she usually didn’t crawl out of bed until ten or later. What did she do, wait up until Guy came home? He wondered with a sigh what Monica thought he could do about their father’s hours; send him to bed without supper? He couldn’t remember when Guy hadn’t had women on the side, though Renee Devlin had certainly had a lot more staying power than the rest of them.
    His mother, Noelle, didn’t care where Guy spent his nights, so long as it wasn’t with her, and simply pretended that her husband’s affairs didn’t exist. Because Noelle didn’t care, Gray didn’t either. It would have been different if