Crooked River: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

into the trees, and then it was just the three of us again. Me and Ollie and Bear. And all the lies we’d told.
    L ater that afternoon in the garden, I kneeled in the dirt and yanked weeds from a long row of tomato plants. Bear was crouched a few rows over beside a squash plant, pushing aside leaves, looking for fruit. I reached the end of a tomato row and started on another. When the tomatoes were finished, I worked my way over to the green beans. I wasn’t meticulous the way I was with Mom’s flower beds. Bear didn’t care if his garden looked nice, only that it was productive, so I pulled just the biggest weeds, the ones that were starting to overtake the vegetables, threatening to steal precious sun and water. I worked quickly, carelessly, leaving behind clumps and patches of smaller weeds. My shirt stuck to my back and sweat dripped down my forehead. My shoulders ached and my knees, too. My hands were covered in dirt. I kept picturing the woman’s shattered face and reaching arms and wondered what difference it would make to tell the truth now. Nothing was going to bring her back to life.
    I grabbed a large dandelion at its base and pulled, but it didn’t budge. I scraped away the top soil around the roots and pulled again, harder. The dandelion snapped in half somewhere beneath the surface, leaving me holding the greens. I tossed them into my weed bucket and looked over at Bear.
    “You think that woman they found is from around here?” I asked.
    He picked a squash from the vine and turned it over in his hands. It was close to a foot in length, slender at the top, bulbous at the bottom, a delicious butter yellow.
    “Don’t know,” he said.
    “You think Franny’d know?”
    He put the squash in an empty bucket and reached for another behind the leaves. He didn’t say anything for a while and then, “Does it make a difference if she’s from around here or someplace else?”
    I sat back on my heels. “How did you get those scratches?”
    Bear touched his cheek and looked off into the trees. “Blackberries caught me when I was out walking.”
    “And that jacket? You found it just lying on the ground? Or what? Hanging from a branch or something?”
    “It was tangled in some bushes by the river.” Bear carried his bucket half full of squash to a row of tomatoes. “I told you already, I thought it was yours. That’s why I brought it home.”
    I shook my head, then reached and pulled a tall thistle from between two bean plants.
    “You don’t believe me,” he said.
    “You weren’t back before dark,” I said.
    “What?”
    “Monday night. You said you’d be back before it got dark.”
    Bear was shuffling between the vines, gently squeezing the reddest tomatoes and picking the ones that were ripe. He glanced at me and then looked away.
    “Where were you?” I pressed.
    He sighed and dug his knuckles into his low back. “Communing with the stars.”
    “You were gone for a long time.”
    He bent over the tomato plants again.
    “Ollie and I were worried sick.”
    “I can take care of myself.”
    I glared at him. “It’s not just you out here anymore, you know. It’s not just you who needs taking care of.”
    “You sound like your mother.”
    I snapped a green bean from the bush I was weeding under, broke it in half, and stuck both pieces in my mouth. I liked them best like this, straight from the garden, crisp and sun warmed. I chewed and chewed until I no longer felt so much like screaming.
    I swallowed the green bean and asked him straight, “Did you have something to do with that woman?”
    He dropped a tomato in the dirt, then picked it up and shined it against his shirt. “What the hell gave you that idea?”
    “You didn’t tell that detective about the jacket.” I picked at the dirt under my fingernails.
    Bear placed the tomato in the bucket with the others, slowly like he was thinking over something, and then he straightened up tall again and caught my gaze, held it steady. “Neither