Carolina Moon Read Online Free PDF Page B

great.
    We get caught skinny-dipping, we’re both going to get it. But giggling, Hope shucked off her shoes, her shorts, then her shirt. I thought you went away.
    Don’t be dopey. Where would I go?
    I’ve been looking a long time. Slowly, Hope eased into the water. Willow slim and marble white. Her hair spread out to float on the surface. Gold against blue. Forever and ever.
    The water darkened, began to stir. The graceful fronds of the willow snapped up like whips. And the water was cold, suddenly so cold Tory began to shiver.
    Storm’s coming up. We’d better go in.
    It’s over my head. I can’t reach the bottom. You have to help me. As the water churned, Hope flailed out, her thin young arms beating, spewing up curtains of water that had gone the murky brown of a marsh.
    Tory struck out, strong strokes, frantic speed, but every arm span took her farther away from where the young girl struggled. The water burned her lungs, dragged at her feet. She felt herself going under, felt herself drowning with Hope’s voice inside her head.
    You have to come. You have to hurry.
    She awoke in the dark, her mouth full of the taste of the swamp. Without the heart or energy to build her wall again, Tory rolled out of bed. In the bathroom, she splashed rusty water on her face, then raised it, dripping, to the mirror.
    Eyes shadowed and still glazed from the dream stared back at her. Too late to turn back, she thought. It always was.
    She grabbed her purse and the unused travel kit she’d brought in with her.
    The dark was soothing now, and the candy bar and soft drink she’d bought from the rumbling vending machine outside her room kept her system wired. She turned on the radio to distract her mind. She wanted to think of nothing but the road.
    When she hit the heart of the state the sun was up, and the traffic thick. She stopped to refuel the gas-guzzling station wagon before heading east. When she passed the exit that led to where her parents had once again relocated, her stomach clenched and stayed tight for another thirty miles.
    She thought of her grandmother, of the stock loaded in the back of the car or being shipped to Progress. She thought of her budget for the next six months and the work involved in having her store up and running by Memorial Day.
    She thought of anything but the real reason driving her back to Progress.
    Just outside of Florence she stopped again and used the rest room of a Shell station to brush her hair, apply some makeup. The artifice wouldn’t fool her grandmother, but at least she’d have made an effort.
    She stopped again, on impulse, at a florist. Her grandmother’s gardens were always a showplace, but the dozen pink tulips were another kind of effort. She lived—had lived, Tory reminded herself—just under two hours from her grandmother and hadn’t made the trip, the effort of it, since Christmas.
    When she turned down the pretty street with its blooming dogwoods and redbuds she wondered why. It was a good place, the kind of neighborhood where children played in the yards and dogs napped in the shade. A gossip-over-the-backyard-fence kind of place where people noticed strange cars and kept their eye on their neighbor’s house as much out of consideration as curiosity.
    Iris Mooney’s house sat in the middle of the block, bandbox neat with old and enormous azaleas guarding the foundation. The blooms were past their peak, but the faded pinks and purples added a delicate color to the strong blue paint her grandmother had chosen. As expected, her front garden was lush and lovely, the gentle slope of the yard well trimmed and the stoop scrubbed and swept.
    A pickup truck with the sign ANYTIME PLUMBING was parked in the drive behind her grandmother’s aging compact. Tory pulled to the curb. The tension she’d ignored along the drive began to ease as she walked toward the house.
    She didn’t knock. She’d never had to knock on this door, and had always known it would open in welcome to