Mortal Faults Read Online Free PDF Page B

stupid. In the past she’d rarely approached the subject without proper preparation. Lately she’d been more willing to wing it. She told herself that her experience gave her enough flexibility to improvise her way out of anything. It might be true. Or maybe she just liked the rush she got by taking a reckless chance.
    She drove back down the street. A few yards from the woman’s house, she killed the Mazda’s engine and let the car roll to a stop by the curb.
    She took a moment to study the place. A small one-story home, huddled between look-alike houses in an aging development. The car in the driveway next door was raised on cinderblocks, and a lawnmower rusted in the yard. The house on the opposite side appeared to be abandoned, its windows boarded up. Across the street was a pocket park with playground equipment—a slide, a swing set. The park was empty now.
    She got out of the Mazda and walked up the front path. She was getting a funny vibe from the place. In some unaccountable way, the little house seemed draped in sadness. Maybe it was the lawn, green and close-cropped and meticulously tended, or the flower beds with their desperately cheerful arrangements of pinks and mums. Someone spent a great deal of time on appearances. Or it might be the heavy curtains covering the front windows, curtains that were stiff and faded, as if they hadn’t been opened in years.
    The woman who lived here was alone. She never had company. Abby was sure of it, sure in her gut, where the truest intuitions lived.
    Well, she would have company now.

 
     
     
    4
     
    The doorbell frightened Andrea.
    She had no visitors, ever. For the most part, the only sounds in her world were the ticking of the wall clock and the laughing cries of children in the park across the street. She rarely turned on the television or radio. She didn’t even own a record player or tape deck. She lived in a cocoon of silence.
    Now, at nearly ten o’clock at night, the doorbell had rung.
    Her first impulse was to hide. Retreat to her bedroom and wait for whoever was outside her door to leave.
    But then the doorbell rang a second time, and Andrea knew she had to answer. She had to know who was out there. Otherwise her imagination would torture her with a hundred possibilities. It was better to know.
    Besides, she didn’t have to actually
open
the door.
    She crossed the living room, past the carefully nurtured plants on her end tables, plants chosen because they didn’t need much sun. Once she had loved daylight, but then she had spent twelve years in darkness, and now it was only in the dark that she felt comfortable.
    Bracing herself against the door, she risked a look through the peephole. The porch light was on, illuminating a woman, dark-haired, slender.
    “Yes?” Andrea called out. “What is it?”
    The woman frowned, perturbed at having to speak through a closed door. “I’m sorry to bother you, ma’am. My car seems to have run out of gas.”
    She gestured behind her. Dimly it was possible to see a car stopped by the curb.
    This could be a trick. People were always claiming to have some automotive problem, and when the homeowner opened the door...
    She wouldn’t fall for it. She would make the woman go away. “I don’t have any gasoline. I’m sorry.”
    “I was hoping to use your phone, call Triple A.”
    The phone. No, that was out of the question. For the woman to use the phone, she would have to come inside the house.
    “I’m afraid that’s impossible,” Andrea said through the door. “Don’t you have a phone of your own? One of those cellular phones?”
    “The battery is dead.”
    “Then you’ll have to try one of my neighbors.”
    “All the lights are out. It doesn’t look like anyone’s awake.”
    “Someone must be. If they’re asleep, you can wake them.”
    “I’d really prefer not to do that. Can’t I just make a quick call? It’ll only take a minute.”
    Yes, it would only take a minute. A minute to place a phone