Cauchemar Read Online Free PDF

best interests at heart, and you don’t know enough to spot them. Goodbye, child.” Samuel inclined his head as he passed, and Hannah wondered if somewhere a family still awaited the man’s return.
    â€œGoodbye.” Hannah watched her mother step gracefully into the small wooden boat tied to the dock.
    As Hannah headed toward the back door of the house, an avian cry pierced the silence. She whirled around to scan the waters, but the ripples left by her mother’s boat were already fading. The bayou was a cathedral, light washing over the ancient moss-coated roots, and she, slender and trembling, was the pulpit.
    Doug opened the back door and raised his eyebrows in question. “Everything okay?”
    â€œThanks for coming,” Hannah said, squeezing his arm.
    â€œOf course. Anything you need. Mae was a saving grace after my little girl passed on. I wept at your kitchen table more times than I can remember, and Mae always knew which memory of Abigail would cheer my heart.” He cleared his throat. “That Ellis girl dropped by, too,” Doug said, fingering his beard. He didn’t notice Hannah’s smile fade. “Shame what happened there. She left the bayou so soon after, I never expected to see her again.”
    â€œIt’s nice that she came.” Hannah tried to keep her voice normal, but found herself thinking of Sarah Anne’s periwinkle blue eyes. Blonde curls so perfectly formed that Hannah always expected them to be plastic, each time she fit her finger into them.
    Somehow she navigated the outstretched hands in the kitchen, all of Mae’s mourners clamoring to share their grief with her, and headed out the front door. She scurried down the gravel path, looking left and right, until she saw the woman. Hannah recognized her from the back, although her hair was straightened, her curls ironed to a faded white-blonde.
    â€œSarah Anne,” she called out.
    The woman turned, a hesitant smile teasing at her mouth. Her body had lengthened, and her face, once sweet and round as peaches, was angular. “I wanted to give my condolences,” Sarah Anne said. “I’m so sorry, Hannah. I know how much you loved her.”
    â€œThank you. It was a shock.” Her voice sounded strained to her own ears. “I didn’t realize you were back in town.” She wondered what it’d be like to hug Sarah Anne’s adult body, even as she wanted to push up the scalloped sleeve of Sarah Anne’s dress and see her right arm, the one she’d ruined that day, so many years ago. Hannah shook her head to clear her nose of the smell of charred flesh, pale hairs flashing like a comet’s tail then dissolved. The guilt, which had felt overwhelming in the years after and then slowly dulled, felt fresh again.
    â€œI’ve moved back for a bit.” Sarah Anne pulled at the sleeve of her trench coat as though reading Hannah’s thoughts. “My uncle has some business in the area, so he’s renting a house. The real estate agent insisted it was a coup—I was expecting a hole in the wall, but the price got slashed. Someone died there apparently, but it doesn’t really bother me. Look back far enough, and someone’s died just about everywhere.”
    â€œHow are you?” Hannah asked, the words a paltry substitution for all she wanted to ask.
    Sarah Anne shrugged. “It’s slow as ever around here, but I’ve managed to find a distraction or two. I’m just happy to see these fine Southern boys haven’t changed a bit. Still dumb as posts but gorgeous as the risen sun.”
    Hannah laughed despite herself. “You haven’t changed, either.”
    â€œEverything changes,” Sarah Anne said, her voice faint.
    Hannah searched her old friend’s face and saw the evidence of her words. There was a heaviness there, as if she rarely smiled and only with effort. She wondered if it was the memory of that day, or