Mud Girl Read Online Free PDF Page B

She knew it somehow – that he was capable of that.

Over the Line
    â€œW ould you like to go over the line? See the Fourth of July fireworks?” Rhodes stands at the door in a red-and-white striped western shirt with blue jeans, and heels with a narrow band of cut-out stars across the toes.
    Abi tries not to smile at the shoes and shakes her head, mumbles something about the lineup there’ll be at the border crossing. The few times she’s been there, Blaine and Peace Arch were always busy. Besides, except for the flag and the water-melon, she doesn’t usually do anything about Canada Day.
    But Rhodesy is rattling on with her firecracker speech: “It’s wonderful fun! The best. I never miss fireworks! Sure you don’t want to come?”
    Abi shakes her head. “No thanks.” She resists saying that she doesn’t have the right footwear.
    â€œWell,” says Rhodesy, “another time, then.” Her car – Betty, is it? – is almost in the blackberry bushes, there’s so little space by the road. She has to wait until there’s a hole in the traffic before she can open her door. She gives a little wave of her round white hand before sinking into her seat, then she fiddles with the radio. Looking for someone to travel with, Abi thinks.
    Mum always said, “You have yourself. That is enough. It’s all in here.” She’d tap her head. Abi can hear those words now. No, there was no looking for someone to travel with, with Abi’s mother – God-Rest-Her-Feet.
Happy Independence Day, Mum
, Abi wishes. She wonders if Dad has ever sent Mum a message in a bottle. A bottle would have about as much luck at finding her. A thought comes to Abi now, though.
Mum is nowhere near water.
She turns the thought over in her mind. It looks the same upside down, and from any side. She knows it is true. So – one other piece about her mother.
    A bi’s head is in the kitchen sink. It’s the easiest way to wash her hair, instead of in the rust-tub. The bathroom fixtures predate Uncle Bernard, who lived in the house before them.
    The water flows at the nape of Abi’s neck, round her ears, down her cheeks, and is cooling on a warm July day. Her eyes are closed, but she can feel the room change, and she reaches for a towel with one hand, the tap with the other, and gathers her hair into the towel and turns, and yes, he’s here.
    â€œI let myself in the screen door,” he says.
    She feels strangely unselfconscious. It should bother her that he’s let himself in, and that she’s standing here with wet hair in a terry cloth turban. But it doesn’t bother her; quite the contrary – it feels right.
    â€œIn an hour it’ll be twilight, and there’ll be fireworks at the Point.”
    The Point: she’d forgotten Point Roberts, that little apple-pie-shaped piece of America that dangles from the Canadian border, just half an hour from here, population not much more than a thousand. Still has more trees than people, more vacation cottages than houses, though just the other side, the Canadian side, is a well-developed suburb.
    â€œThey have fireworks there?”
    â€œOf course.” He grins.
    For Canada Day fireworks, you have to drive an hour into the city.
    He holds out his hand.
    â€œMy hair,” she says.
    â€œYou have no excuse,” he says. “You’ve washed it, you’re ready to go.” He takes off her turban, makes a sort of dance step of it, turning her around under his arm. Then he combs his fingers through her hair.
    â€œPerfect,” he says.
    Perfect
. No makeup, wet hair, her mother’s left-behind jeans. Okay, now she’s self-conscious.
    â€œGotta get something else on,” she mutters, and moves quickly toward her door. She wonders if he’s noticed Dad yet. Doesn’t seem to have, when she opens her door moments later, changed, hair slicked into a