In a Handful of Dust Read Online Free PDF Page B

anymore. It wasn’t something we spent a lot of time learning about.”
    “One of the things you didn’t learn was how long somebody carries it. That what you’re saying?” Lynn asked.
    “Yes,” Vera said. “He could be a carrier for a week, a month, or forever. I simply don’t know.”
    “I fetched his mother,” Stebbs said, “brought her back to our place, and explained the situation. Told her that her son would have to leave.”
    Lucy clutched a pillow to her chest, denial tearing a hot path down her insides. “No, you can’t do that. You can’t make him go just because your stupid college didn’t teach you something forty years ago. That’s not fair and you know it.”
    “What’s fair then, little one?” Stebbs asked. “Letting him stay? Not telling people he’s sick and having him infect others?”
    “Stebbs is right, Lucy,” Vera said. “It’s the only thing I can think to do.”
    “But what if it’s only for a week, or a month, like you said? What then? He’s gone and he never comes back because you were wrong .”
    “That’s true,” Vera said. “But what if we take the chance, let him come back, and more fall sick? What do we tell them?”
    “And then what?” Stebbs continued. “Try again later and tell the next round of sick it’s their bad luck and we were wrong again?” He shook his head. “I know you got feelings for the boy, but we talked it and talked it and this is the only way we can think is best for everyone.”
    “Except Carter,” Lucy said stiffly.
    “What’s best for Carter is if it hadn’t ever happened,” Stebbs said. “But we’re past that.”
    “Easy for you to say,” Lucy said, anger clipping her words. “You can’t get sick.”
    Stebbs’ face went cold, and his tone matched it. “Kid, there ain’t been nothing easy about this. You don’t know the half of it.”
    Lynn perked up at his words. “What’s that mean?” Stebbs looked away from her, and she rounded on Vera. “What aren’t you saying?”
    “There is one other possibility I didn’t mention in front of Carter,” Vera said.
    Lucy’s heart leapt. Possibilities meant options, and hope. “What is it?”
    Vera claimed her hand and wouldn’t give it up. She smiled sadly at her granddaughter before speaking. “It could be you.”
    “Me?” she said softly, touching her chest as if the continued beating of her heart stood in denial. “It could be me?”
    “It’s not you,” Lynn said through her teeth, and moved toward Vera. “And damn you for saying such a thing to her.”
    Stebbs yanked her back by the shoulder. “Easy now. Getting angry ain’t helping.”
    “Neither is saying a bunch of bullshit,” Lynn spat.
    “I wouldn’t think it, much less say it, if there weren’t a chance it was true,” Vera said. “She was with the sick and the well as much as Carter. She was with Maddy. I can’t condemn him without questioning her.”
    Lynn struggled out of Stebbs’ grip and kicked the wall, but held her silence. Vera turned to Lucy.
    “Sweetheart, has there been anything, any headache, fever, back pain? Anything at all out of the ordinary you can think of, before Maddy died?”
    Lucy shook her head slowly, her mind poring over the hours and days before her friend’s death. “No . . . I . . . I don’t think so.”
    Images of Maddy flickered through her brain—her friend in a painful coil under the bedspread, her dead body lying at the bottom of the pit. She took a ragged breath, and Adam’s tiny smile flooded her thoughts along with Carter’s slumped body at Vera’s table as he wept for his fate.
    “Say it’s not me, Grandma,” she begged, clutching Vera’s hand so tightly her nails left crescent cuts that filled with blood. “Say I didn’t do it to them.”
    Vera’s soft, cool hand trailed over her hair. “I can’t tell you for sure. I’m sorry.”
    Lucy fell forward onto Vera, burying her head in her lap and sobbing as Carter had, with no hope and