Plain Fear: Forgiven: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

bridge and toward the main highway leading back to Cincinnati, she’d suspected he was banging some other English girl. Was she here at the library of all places?
    Now jealousy picked up her pace along the sidewalk. Andi kicked a glob of ice and mud out of her way. Was he into some nerd? A library dork? It didn’t matter, because some bookworm wouldn’t be too much competition for her.
    The temperature took another dip. Andi hunched her shoulders and dug her hands deep into the pockets of her wool coat. Spring felt months away when it should be around the corner. To dispel that myth, the wind howled at her. It sounded like a voice, a cry.
    Samuel.
    Was that his name gliding on the wind or only her mind conjuring hope? She looked around but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Downtown on a Wednesday night wasn’t the most happening place.
    Stamping her feet to keep warm, she looked longingly at the glowing lights in the library windows. She never had much of an interest in hanging out in such a boring place. What was there to do in there anyway?
    As a kid, her mom had sometimes dropped her off at their local library while she’d gone on a date. Andi had found a self-help section, which included books on sex, where, with the help of pencil drawings, she’d learned about life. Other books had actual pictures of men and women making love. She’d moved from there to the romance section, always skipping the boring parts of sea battles or pouring tea and going right for the sex scenes. Eventually, Andi found a boy equally bored, and they’d done the deed in the backseat of his mom’s car while she was reading Redbook . Andi had become well acquainted with the upholstery of Camrys, Chevrolets, and VW bugs, finding cookie crumbs and petrified French fries along the floorboards, and discovered which seats left rug burns on her back and legs and which didn’t. Leather, she’d learned, was the best.
    Back then, she and whatever boy she was with had fumbled around, experimenting and discovering, until by the time she was in eighth grade, she’d moved on to seniors in high school, then college boys, a teacher or two, and somewhere along the way, a principal. But older men weren’t always the most savvy when it came to women. Finally, in her search for fulfillment, she’d met a biker who knew a thing or two. Then along came Samuel, and she’d enjoyed tutoring him in the art of screwing.
    He, in turn, had shared his family and religion with her, how they lived like it was back in the olden days without electricity. She’d said, “You’re nuts. Why suffer when you don’t have to?”
    More often than not, she’d listened as Samuel explained about his family and older brothers, especially the one who had died—who she later learned had only been declared dead by Samuel’s father. What was his name? Oh yeah, Jacob. He’d been a bookworm, a pseudo-intellectual, and apparently bent on destruction, because since then, he really had died. Andi hadn’t worried his fatal intellectualism was a family trait because Samuel rarely had the patience to read even the TV Guide . But now Samuel was in the intellectual center of this town.
    Another blast of cold wind punctuated by damp, icy spray made her decide to brave the interior of the library. What did she have to lose? She might meet a bookworm and educate him on the Dewey decimals in the nonfiction section. At least she’d be warmer than she was now. So she jogged across the street and entered through the glass doors.
    Some teenagers were giggling at the computers. Wanting to avoid them, Andi headed up the stairs, the movement kicking her heart into gear and warming her limbs. The farther she went, the more empty the building felt.
    Isolated, she searched for someone…anyone. Maybe Samuel needed her now more than ever. The way some people sensed a change in the weather approaching, she felt a prodding and pushing, as if there were an urgency for her to find Samuel. Not believing in