Mammoth Secrets Read Online Free PDF Page B

other?”
    “Nope,” Eden said. “And once something’s been mailed, you can’t break into the box. It’s a federal offense.”
    “So speaks the budding lawyer.” Lilah pressed in a bubble of laughter.
    Together, they collapsed in a fit of girlish giggles.
    “Somewhere, someone overseas is about to be very disappointed.”
    “Yeah.” Eden wiped her eyes and sighed, a halfhearted laugh bubbled up again. “Someone in California, too.”
    Lilah squeezed her sister’s hand. All amusement vanished like the breeze, an icicle of worry skewered in its place.
     
     
     
     

6
     
    Thursday. The weeks blurred by in a spring haze. Lilah’s hand rake clomped into the cold earth, dark mud seeped through the gloves. A shiver ran the length of her spine that had little to do with the slow-creeping early morning light, and everything to do with the letter Eden had so cavalierly shipped off to California. Her well-meaning, well-intending sister had a heart of gold and a head full of rocks.
    With each thud, the claw alternately dug up rich, red clay or upturned broken stones. Danged rocky Ozark soil.
    Up the road a figure was jogging toward her. A jogger? In Mammoth? He approached from River View Drive. Good form, easy stride, arms pumping.
    She considered going inside and grabbing her own running shoes. She turned her attention back to a corner of stubborn rock, slammed it with the rake’s handle. The stone fractured, but the claw popped off the hand tool. “Of all the stupid–” She tossed the useless tool aside, followed by the first, second, and third rocky lumps. “Idiotic... Imbecilic...” She teetered and landed in a whoosh of breath.
    “Usually people don’t arrive at that opinion of me until they’ve known me at least a month.” Pastor Jake’s voice rained down. He walked toward her in worn running shoes, black jogging shorts, a gray Cal State t-shirt, and a music player strapped to a well-formed bicep. Indeed, the new pastor of Mammoth, Arkansas’s Cherokee Spring Memorial Church, could be jogging the Santa Monica strand rather than through a humid Ozark neighborhood.
    “I’m a little busy.” Lilah spoke to the ground. “Something you need?”
    “Nope. Just out for a run.”
    “Unusual pastime for a preacher, isn’t it?”
    “I could quote you several lines of scripture saying otherwise, but somehow...” He picked up the handle and claw head, worked one back into the other, and handed it back. “I think you’re just ribbing me.”
    “You got me.” She put the rake to good use, hiding the soul-surging grin. Not just a handsome, single man right next door, but a pastor, too? That was just God being ironic. Had to be. Still in his shadow, she wiped loose bangs, rake in hand. “Can I do something for you?”
    “I was just wondering.” He scratched his chin, smiling. “What is it you’re so angry about?”
    He stood, checked his pulse, fingertips to throat, staring at his watch while her mind reeled. So that was it. Her personal business, everyone’s coffee talk, Eden’s prayer chain must’ve finally linked to the new pastor.
    “What makes you think I’m angry?”
    “That’s a deep hole for tomatoes. Looks like you’re burying a body.”
    “You got me.” Lilah stood. “I’m just turning negative energy into something more productive. Trying to, anyway.” She peeled off her gloves, brushed off her muddy knees, and set a foot to the gray-planked front steps, leaving the six-pack of plants unplanted.
    Jake obviously had no intention of leaving.
    “Uh, you want a cup of coffee or something?”
    “That’s mighty neighborly of you.”
    She pointed toward the downward slope of lawn and the river below. “Deck’s got a great view. I’ll join you in a minute.”
    Inside, Lilah would never get used to the bright red painted walls, the white slip-covered couch barely visible under throw pillows in a rainbow of chartreuse, ginger, and electric blue. Equally colorful framed photographs of