Be Not Afraid Read Online Free PDF Page B

as I burst through the front door. The chair in front of the wide bay window—where Mom sometimes sat reading a book, or arranging a vase of irises, or more and more these days, just staring out at the ocean view behind the glass—was empty.
Okay,
I told myself.
When I left, she was in her room. And that’s where she probably still is.
    I raced up the steps, two at a time. Her room was empty, the blue cotton sheets still wrinkled and mussed. A cry escaped my lips, and I bit down on the back of my wrist to quell it. I was jumping to conclusions, already thinking the worst, which was what I always did when I was unsure of something. I had to relax. Try not to panic. There was still any number of places where she could be.
    I raced out to the garden, half expecting to see the brim of Mom’s straw hat bobbing in and among the green, but there was no sign of it. Still, I tore through the swaths of irises, pushing them aside as if she might be hidden among them, the white and yellow and purple petals fluttering behind me like pieces of candy-colored velvet. Nothing. She wasn’t in the tool shed or in the garage, either. Maybe we were out of the cranberry juice she liked to drink and she’d gone to the store. I flew into the kitchen, looking for an envelope, a scrap of anything that Mom always found to write on whenever she had to leave. Once, she’d even scribbled a note on the side of a sneaker, BACK IN TEN MINUTES , and left it on the kitchen counter for me to find. But there was no note.
    I went outside and cupped my hands around my moth. “Mom!” I shouted. “Mom, please! Where are you?” My voice cracked on the last word, a glass shattering in the distance.
    There was nothing else to do except call Dad. My heart hammered like a snare drum in my ears, and the faint tasteof bile pooled along my gums. “Dad, it’s me. Do you know where Mom is?”
    “What do you mean, ‘where Mom is’?” His voice was tinged with alarm. “She’s home. With you.”
    “She’s not home. I looked everywhere.”
    “She left? Without telling you?”
    “I left.” I closed my eyes at the weight of my words. “I know you told me not to, but Janine called and …” My voice wobbled. “Mom said I could go, and I did.”
    “
Mom
said you could go?” He sounded incredulous. “What did
I
tell you?” There was a pause on the other end of the line as he waited for me to answer. But the only thing that came out of my mouth was a tiny sob, which escaped my throat so suddenly that it startled me. I pressed my fist against my lips, but not fast enough.
    “All right.” Dad’s voice was tight. I could hear the fear behind it. “Don’t move. I’ll be right home.”
    I did as he said, sitting in Mom’s chair with my knees together, my feet pressed tiptoe against the floor. And I did not move. Not when Dad came through the door, his dark hair askew, his blue eyes shifting back and forth as he took the stairs two by two, shouting Mom’s name, and then down again, faster this time, when she did not answer. I did not move when Alice, Mom’s best friend, came over a little while later, having been summoned by Dad, and joined him on the beach, hollering Mom’s name. And I did not move when they found her, in the one place I had not been able to make myself go look, her neck broken, thepolice said, against the enormous boulders by the sea, the waves licking her bare feet and calves in vague consolation. In fact, I did not move for the rest of the night, not when the ambulance came, and then the police, who asked me at least ten times what Mom had said behind the closed door before I left, not when Janine materialized suddenly, her face white and peaked as she stared at me across the kitchen before disappearing again without a word, not even when Dad came over and put his arms around me and carried me upstairs.
    Neither of us said anything as he put me in bed and pulled up the covers. For a moment, he just stood there looking down at me,