Coming Home Read Online Free PDF Page B

bees. She took long, deep breaths, exhaling slowly. The inside of the car was stuffy with her body heat.
    “Mom …” she whispered again, the panic as thick as a rock in the pit of her stomach. “I’ll get through this and I will make you proud. I promise.”
    Just when it seemed as if she were descending again, Jessie was granted a reprieve. The old “knowing” washed over her, as it had so many times, like a physical touch, and in spite of its familiarity, shivers sparked up and down her spine. She jerked to look behind her, but no one was there. As quickly as the feeling came, it passed. Jessie felt a shudder of emptiness. She sighed, appraising the house again, a place that had once given her a sense of complete and utter security.
    Surely some brave soul lived there now. Surely the circumstances of her father’s death couldn’t haunt the place. Perhaps she might summon the courage to visit with the new owners, whoever had carefully painted the siding and religiously mowed the lawn.
    Jessie inhaled deeply. After checking up and down the street, she pushed the car door open and headed for the house, trying to appear as nonchalant as possible. She suddenly remembered Mrs. Graybill from across the street, whose nose had been pasted to her front window and who seemed to know everything about everyone on their block. As a child Jessie had been constantly aware of being watched by her nosy neighbor, who probably didn’t mean any harm, but whose observation made Jessie feel as if her life were lived in a fishbowl.
    Even Mom would humorously caution her, “Dress warm, sweetie. Or Mrs. Graybill will wonder what kind of mother you have.”
    Halfway up the sidewalk she paused at the cement step her dad had replaced. She remembered watching him mix the cement and pour it into a form made out of wood from the garage. Afterward he’d invited her to press her tiny fingers into the moist and gritty cement, leaving her mark for future generations to ponder. Instead, here she was coming back and pondering it herself. Oblivious to curious onlookers, Jessie knelt on one knee, studying the edge of the step—recognizing her faint imprint.
    Jessie rose and once again appraised the front door, aware of a gathering conflict between curiosity and fear. Heart thudding in her ears, she climbed the porch steps, and before she could change her mind, knocked on the screen door, the same one she’d peeked back through when Andy would beg her to ride bikes—nearly every day. But that was nothing compared to a deeper realization. She turned to the street, and her mind did a weird click and whirr …
    It was as if she’d never left. She was still the same little girl, coming home every day to make sure her mother was alive, believing that everything was going to be okay. The old hopes … the old beliefs were in the air … floating around, unfinished somehow as if the power of her twelve-year-old determination had been so intense that she’d actually made a physical impression upon this place. She could feel it infusing her again, like putting on an old coat, warm to the touch, soothing to her soul. Hope wasn’t dead. Not yet. My mother is still alive… .
    Jessie slumped to the porch step and with both hands clasped her neck, leaning her head into her elbows, rocking back and forth—nearly curling into a ball right there in her old neighborhood, and for a moment she didn’t care who saw it. She was losing it again.
    It’s over! Jessie repeated to herself, over and over again. She’s gone! They’re both gone! Dead and buried!
    But the most startling thought occurred to her, strange enough to snap her out of her morbid self-pity: Your mother was never buried … remember?
    It came to her so suddenly she had to ponder it a second before dismissing it as one of her imaginative ramblings.

Chapter Five
    ANDY MCCORMICK sucked in a deep breath, reached up, and grasped the bar. Shifting his shoulders, he exhaled and for a moment questioned