Salem Falls Read Online Free PDF

thing you’ve got going is some turn-on.”
Addie closed her eyes. It wasn’t fair to have to deal with Wes Courtemanche on a day like this one. Even Job was eventually cut a break. She also knew that if she refused to go, Wes would just sit in the diner and get on her nerves all night. The easiest way to get rid of him was to simply go out, then plead sick in the middle of the appetizer course.
“You win,” Addie conceded. “Let me just go tell Delilah where I’m off to.”
Before she could reach the kitchen, however, Jack emerged, holding her parka. Seeing the others, he blanched and ducked his head. “Delilah said I should bring this in,” he mumbled. “She said a night off won’t kill you.”
“Oh . . . thanks. Well, I’m glad you came out. I want you to meet Darla.”
Darla held out her hand, which Jack did not take. “Charmed,” she said.
“And this is Wes,” Addie said shortly, shrugging into her coat. “All right. Let’s get this over with. Darla, you’ll tell Delilah to have Chloe in bed by eight?”
No one seemed to be listening. Darla was turning up the TV volume from behind the counter, and Wes squinted at Jack, who trying to sink between the cracks of the linoleum. “Have we met?” Wes asked.
Jack ducked his head, refusing to meet the man’s eye. “No,” he said, clearing a table. “I don’t think so.”
It wasn’t that Wes Courtemanche was such an awful guy-he just wasn’t the right one for Addie, and nothing she said or did seemed to convince him otherwise. After about twenty minutes, a date with Wes took on the feeling of slamming oneself repeatedly into a brick wall. They walked side by side through town, holding Styrofoam cups of hot chocolate. Addie glanced across the green, where the lighted windows of the diner resembled holiday candelabra. “Wes,” she said for the sixth time, “I really have to go-now.”
“Three questions. Just three tiny questions so I can get to know you better.”
She sighed. “All right. And then I’m going.”
“Give me a minute. I’ve got to make sure they’re good ones.” They had just turned the corner of the green when Wes spoke again. “Why do you stay on at the diner?”
The question surprised Addie; she’d been expecting something far more facetious. She stopped walking, steam from her cup wreathing her face like a mystery. “I guess,” she said slowly, “because I have nowhere else to go.”
“How would you know, since you’ve been doing it all your life?”
Addie cast him a sidelong glance. “Is this number two?”
“No. It’s number one, part b.”
“It’s hard to explain, unless you’ve been in the business. You get attached to creating a place where people can come in and feel like they fit. Look at Stuart and Wallace . . . or the student who reads Nietzsche in the back booth every morning. Or even you, and the other police officers who stop in for coffee. If I left, where would they all go?” She shrugged. “In some ways, that diner’s the only home my daughter’s ever known.”
“But Addie-”
She cleared her throat before he could finish speaking. “Number two?”
“If you could be anything in the world, what would you be?”
“A mother,” she said after a moment. “I’d be a mother.”
Wes slid his free arm around her waist and grinned, his teeth as white as the claw of moon above them. “You must be reading my mind, honey, since that brings me right to my third question.” He pressed his lips over her ear, his words vibrating against her skin. “How do you like your eggs in the morning?”
He’s too close. Addie’s breath knotted at the back of her throat and every inch of her skin broke out in a cold sweat. “Unfertilized!” she answered, managing to jam her elbow into his side. Then she ran for the buttery windows of the diner like a sailor from a capsized ship who spies a lighthouse, lashes his hope to it, and swims toward salvation.
Jack and Delilah stood side by side chopping onions, taking