Healing Sands Read Online Free PDF Page B

family. That’s my job, Mrs. Coe.”
    I stood there long after he disappeared around the corner, grasping for sanity, until my cell phone rang. I fished it out of my bag, ready to tell Frances to either get off my back or fire me. But it was Dan’s number.
    â€œYeah,” I barked into it.
    â€œHi, Mom,” said a boy-husky voice.
    I closed my eyes and reined myself back in. “Alex,” I said. “Hey, guy.”
    â€œYou wanna come to my soccer practice?”
    â€œOh—yeah—I heard you were a little jock now.”
    â€œI’m a superstud. It’s at four o’clock. Can you come?”
    â€œTry and stop me. Where?”
    â€œBurn Lake. You know where that is?”
    â€œYes,” I said, though I didn’t. “See you at four.”
    â€œOh, and, Mom?”
    â€œYeah?”
    â€œCould you bring the snacks?”
    â€œSnacks?”
    â€œFor the team, for after practice. All the moms do it, and it’s your turn.”
    â€œThen I’m on it,” I said.
    We hung up without my asking how many snacks to bring. I didn’t want him to know I had no idea how many kids were on a soccer team. Or anything else about his life.
    But I was determined to find out.

CHAPTER FOUR
    S ince “snack” was the only thing he’d asked of me, I wheeled up to a mini-mart and loaded up on everything I knew Alex loved, which was anything with peanut butter in it. With several gallon bags of Reese’s in one sack, two family packs of PB crackers in another, and four liters of Gatorade in a third, I careened out of the store, and with the help of Perdita headed for Burn Lake.
    As I pulled into a parking space between two cars with orange Las Cruces Youth Soccer bumper stickers, I had to admit that it was a pretty impressive little sports complex. It took me a good five minutes to discover which soccer field was Alex’s, and when I got there every boy was dressed in the same floppy shorts and baggy T-shirt and plastic guards up to his knees. I only picked mine out when somebody yelled, “Good tackle, Alex!”
    That someone was Dan.
    I stifled a groan and looked up into the stands, but I saw only a knot of women in visors and sunglasses, most of them on cell phones. When I heard him again, I turned toward the field. Dan was out there running with the kids, wearing a ball cap that said COACH on it.
    A fact Alex and Dan had both neglected to mention. Since when did Dan know anything about soccer?
    â€œYou must be Alex’s mom.”
    I turned and had to look immediately down, at a tiny woman with dark straight hair that was almost as long as she was. She shook back girlish bangs and smiled almost shyly at me.
    â€œI’m Poco Dagosto,” she said. “Felipe’s mom.”
    I hoped I looked like I knew who Felipe was. “Nice to meet you. I’m Ryan.” I tried to put out a hand to shake hers, but I was too encumbered with grocery bags.
    Her deep-black eyes lit up. “Alex said you were bringing snacks. He promised me he gave you more than two minutes’ notice. Well, here, let me take some of that.”
    She tried to extricate two of the sacks from my arms, and one of them tumbled to the ground and spilled out the Reese’s peanut butter cups, just in time for two more women to join us. One of them leaned over to retrieve them and was instantly lost in a blonde tangle of her own hair. The other one lowered her sunglasses and stared.
    â€œYou brought candy?” she said.
    â€œI hope it’s for us.” Poco giggled like a nervous twelve-year-old. “We could always use the chocolate.”
    â€œNo, seriously.” Anti-candy Woman took the shades completely off and surveyed me with cool blue eyes the shape of apostrophes. Straggles of hair had escaped her ponytail and were wagging in the breeze. They’d once been a mousy brown. Turning gray wasn’t going well.
    â€œI see peanut butter