House of Reckoning Read Online Free PDF Page B

charcoal lines with which the drawing was limned. “It—It’s beautiful,” he whispered.
    “I did it by looking in the mirror, so it’s all backward,” Sarah said, but Ed shook his head.
    “Couldn’t tell by me. It looks exactly like you.” He turned the picture toward Kate. “Did you see this?”
    Kate nodded but said nothing.
    Ed turned the picture back and gently lay a finger on the image’s left cheek just the way Sarah remembered him doing to her back when … back when …
    Back when everything had still been all right and her mother hadn’t been sick, and her father only drank once in a while and—No! she told herself. Don’t start crying and don’t start feeling sorry for yourself!
    “Thanks, sweetheart,” she heard her father say as she jerked herself out of her thoughts. “And thank you, too, Ms. Williams.”
    “Call me Kate,” the social worker said. Then, seeing that both father and daughter were welling with tears neither one of them wanted to give in to, she decided to change the subject. “We’ve found a family here in Warwick for Sarah to live with,” she began. “They’re—”
    “Isn’t that great?” Sarah broke in, seizing on the opportunity Kate had offered. “They’ve got a girl my age and a boy a couple of years older. And I’ll be able to visit you all the time!” She saw a terrible sadness wash over her father’s face, and in that split second, all the regrets she knew were inside him. “I-I’ll draw you more pictures,” she offered, wishing there was something else—anything else—she could do to make him feel better, but knowing there wasn’t.
    “I’ll be all right,” Ed whispered. “I’m a lucky man.”
    “And when you get out,” Sarah pressed on, “we’ll go back to the farm. We’ll …” But the words died on her lips as she saw the look that passed between her father and Kate.
    We’re not going back to the farm, she thought. Not ever.
    Angie Garvey finished wiping down the kitchen counters, rinsed the sponge, stuffed it into the mouth of the pottery frog that everyone in the family hated except her, and pushed the button on the dishwasher. Except for a quick mopping of the floor, the kitchen was finished.
    Too bad she hadn’t gotten around to washing the windows. They were pretty bad. On the other hand, with the sheers dropped, you could hardly notice the streaks.
    She pulled the vacuum cleaner from the closet and plugged it into an outlet in the small dining room, anticipating a roar of disapproval from Mitch, who, as usual, was slouched on the sofa watching some sporting event on the television that dominated the equally small living room.
    “Mitch,” she said. “I have to vacuum.”
    “Do it later,” he said, not even bothering to glance at her.
    Angie’s jaw muscles tightened, but instead of putting the vacuuming off, she walked over to the couch, picked up the remote and turned off the television.
    “Hey!” Mitch glowered up at her. “I was watching that.” He grabbed for the remote, but she held it out of his reach.
    “Watching what?” she challenged. “Tell me who was playing andwhat the score was within three points.” Seeing the blank look on his face, she twisted the knife. “Forget the score. Just name the teams. Even one of them.”
    Mitch’s glower deepened and his fingers closed around the beer can in his hand, crushing it.
    “You don’t even know one of the teams,” Angie said, not trying to keep the disgust out of her voice. She tossed the remote back onto the couch. “Get up, Mitch. Get dressed. The social worker’s bringing the foster kid here in an hour, and I want you to look as good as the house.”
    “I look fine,” Mitch said, “and I don’t want no foster kid living with us. They’re nothin’ but trouble. If they were worth anythin’, they wouldn’t need people like us.”
    Angie pulled open the drapes, and Mitch, unshaven and still in the T-shirt and underwear he’d slept in, squinted in the