One Summer Read Online Free PDF Page B

way of knowing that, and she hadn’t told him. He was a nice man, and he had only meant to compliment her. He had a good income—he was a pharmacist and owned his own drugstore—and nice manners, and he was reasonably good-looking. She was sure that he would be a good father. And she was starting to want kids.
    It was time she married. If Michael’s defection had killed an elusive something inside her, well, such was life. She did not delude herself that she was the only woman who had ever been dumped. Her broken heart had long since healed. Certainly she no longer ached for Michael. Age had given her the wisdom and determination necessary to make a marriage work. If she was hesitating because she remembered the fiery excitement of her passion for Michael and found it lacking in her relationship with Rob, she had only to remind herself that she was no longer the naive, starry-eyed girl who had loved with a whole heart and unbounded confidence in her future happiness. She had grown up and wised up.
    “Rachel! Rachel, come down here this minute!”
    For her mother to yell up the stairs like that was unusual enough to snap Rachel to attention. Turning away from the mirror, she opened her door and hurried toward the kitchen. Elisabeth stood at the bottom of the stairs, a long-tined fork clutched in one hand. From her expression Rachel could tell she was upset.
    “There was a call for you,” she said before Rachel could ask what the matter was. “It was Ben from the store. He said you’d better come down right away. The police are there. There’s been some trouble with that Johnny Harris.”

4

    T wo police cars were parked in front of the hardware store. A half-dozen or so bystanders milled around outside, kept from entering by a uniformed officer. That officer was Linda Howlett, Rachel saw as she got out of the car, whose younger sister had been in Rachel’s class two years before. Linda spotted Rachel and waved her on past, and Rachel hurried into the store. The scene that greeted her was so appalling that, just inside the entrance, it momentarily stopped her cold.
    Two men were sprawled on the floor, one prone, one supine, and three uniformed officers were crouching over them. Greg Skaggs, son of Idell and older brother of Jeff, had joined the Tylerville police force just the year before. One of his knees was pressed into the center of a broad, white T-shirted back, while his drawn pistol was nuzzled into a head of unruly black hair. Another officer, Kerry Yates, was kneeling as he held the prone man’s arm twisted up hard behind his back. Rachel needed no more than a glance to identify Johnny Harris as the man being thus detained. A few feet beyond him, the identity of the other downed man was more problematic. Chief Jim Wheatley bent over him, his posture indicating that he perceived little threat as he pressed two fingers to the pulse in the man’s throat. Behind the counter, OliviaTompkins, the nineteen-year-old who worked in the store part time, watched, her heavily mascaraed eyes huge. Ben Zeigler, the store manager, emerged from a rear stockroom as Rachel hesitated. Clearly none of them were as yet aware of her presence, and Ben, perhaps blinded by the late afternoon glare that was pouring in through the windows, did not immediately see her standing there.
    “Mrs. Grant said Rachel’s on her way,” Ben said to Chief Wheatley.
    “Good.”
    “Get the hell off me, asshole! You’re breaking my goddamned arm.” The snarl came from Johnny, who made an abortive movement to free himself that was halted by a hard jerk on his twisted arm. He responded with language so filthy, it made Rachel blink. It occurred to her then that however innocent Johnny might have been when he was tried and convicted, prison might have changed him so that he was now truly a threat to decent society. Certainly he had been less than a gentleman with her earlier. Whatever had gotten him into the position he now occupied must have