Black Creek Crossing Read Online Free PDF

there was nothing to be gained by arguing with his father, Seth stood up and started downstairs, his father’s words echoing in his mind.
    .

.

.

play ball with your friends

.

.

.
    Didn’t his father know he didn’t have any friends?
    .

.

.

like a normal kid

.

.

.
    Was that what his father thought? That he wasn’t normal? Just because he wasn’t like the rest of the kids, did that mean he wasn’t normal?
    Seth grabbed a jacket off the hook by the front door, pulled the door open, and went out into the fall afternoon. But instead of trying to join the game in front of the Jacksons’ house down the block, he turned the other way.
    If he hurried, there might be just enough light to see whatever it was his camera had caught in the upstairs window of the old house at Black Creek Crossing.
    “Tell me you’re kidding,” Zack Fletcher groaned, his dark eyes fixing on his mother, the Kentucky Fried drumstick in his hand quivering at the halfway point between the plate and his mouth. His expression was a combination of disbelief and something that resembled panic. “Please, Mom, tell me you’re kidding.”
    “Why would I be kidding?” Joni Fletcher countered. At the far end of the table, Ed had also stopped eating, and though his face was impassive, there was a flatness in his eyes that told her he shared their son’s lack of enthusiasm for the news she’d just given them. “I don’t see why you’re so surprised,” she went on, deciding to concentrate on Zack first. “It’s not like your aunt Myra and I haven’t been talking about them moving here for years. And the house is perfect for them—absolutely what they’ve been looking for.”
    Zack rolled his eyes with the disdain typical of a sixteen-year-old who has recently discovered that his parents know nothing about anything. Shaking his head in disgust, he returned his attention to the chicken.
    Ed, on the other hand, chose to respond on behalf of both the males in the house:
    “As far as I know,
they
haven’t been looking for a house at all,” he said. “Seems to me it’s been you who’s been doing all the looking.”
    “I’m a real estate broker, remember?” Joni reminded him. “It’s my job to look at houses and match them up with people.”
    “Couldn’t you match them up with people who are actually looking for a house?” Ed replied. “And can afford one?”
    Joni decided to ignore the first question. “They can afford the one I found today.”
    “Must be some house,” Zack observed darkly. “Does Uncle Marty even have a job?”
    “Do you?” Joni shot back, fixing her son with the kind of look that up until a year ago would have silenced him. Now he only shrugged.
    “I’m only sixteen, remember, Mom? What do you want me to do, drop out of school?”
    “When your father and I were your age—” Joni began, but Ed didn’t let her finish.
    “When we were his age, your folks didn’t have a pot to pee in, and neither did mine. That’s why we worked, remember? If we wanted any money, we had to earn it ourselves.”
    “Which didn’t hurt either one of us,” Joni replied.
    Ed’s brows arched. “And we
both
decided that we’d never put our own kid in the same position.”
    There was just enough emphasis on the word
both
to make Joni squirm. “Maybe we were wrong,” she suggested.
    “Maybe we were,” Ed agreed in a tone far more affable than the expression on his face. “But it’s not what we were talking about. So why don’t you tell us just which house it is you think would make such a perfect home for your sister and—” He hesitated a moment, his eyes darting toward Zack, and Joni could see him censoring whatever phrase he’d been about to utter. “—your brother-in-law,” he finally finished.
    “Gee, Dad,” Zack said, a broad grin spreading across his features. “That’s not what you called him when we were out fishing last week.”
    Joni cocked her head, eyeing her son. “Really? And just