Secondhand Sinners Read Online Free PDF

think there’s some up there…a lot of milk. Thanks.”
    Miller made her coffee and took his black. He handed her a mug and leaned back against the kitchen counter.
    Still not satisfied with any of his answers, she asked again, “Why are you here, Miller?”
    “I told you—”
    “No. I appreciate what you’re doing here. I mean why are you here? I thought you’d hate me.”
    “I don’t hate you. I was hoping to catch up. I’d like to know how you’ve been.”
    Emily looked down the short hall to the only bedroom in Levi’s little apartment. The lump in the middle of the bed was still asleep. “Okay. If Jack wakes up, you’ll have to go.”
    They sat side by side on the sofa. Miller stretched his arm over the back behind her. She sat up straight and stared out the kitchen window at the awakening sky, while both their coffee mugs sat full and untouched on the distressed coffee table.
    “So?” he asked.
    “What?”
    “You married?”
    “Yes,” she lied.
    “You have the one kid?”
    “Yes.” Emily had feared this very conversation for the last fourteen years, and it was worse than she imagined. “And you have a daughter?”
    “Yep. She’s pretty amazing.”
    Emily, still staring out the window, asked, “How is Sara?”
    “She gave up on my sorry ass and left three years ago.”
    “I’m really sorry.” Miller’s presence was punishing. She guessed he knew that. The slow torture of small talk was more than she could handle.
    “Hey, what’s this?” Miller leaned over and picked up the yearbook that was open to a page with prom pictures.
    “Oh. It’s nothing.” She reached for the book, but it was too late. He laid the book in his lap and looked at the page she had been staring at late into the night. “I couldn’t sleep last night so I got that out.”
    “How’d you get our senior yearbook?”
    “It’s Levi’s. He was a sophomore when we were…” She couldn’t finish the sentence. She’d barely started her senior year before she ran away.
    Miller studied the page. “God that was a terrible night.”
    “Really? Everyone looks so beautiful and happy, like they know they have the rest of their lives ahead of them.” She didn’t mean to sound so sad when she said that. She’d spent hours looking at the pictures of her former classmates and everything she’d missed because she ran away. Homecoming, the Christmas dance, prom, graduation.
    Miller looked at her, and his face softened. “You didn’t finish high school?”
    She shook her head. “I got a GED. There is no prom or graduation for correspondence school.”
    “Well…” He tapped the open page of the yearbook. “This was probably the stupidest prom in the history of proms. They actually had some kind of Under the Sea theme. All these dressed up girls with all the make up? They didn’t look so good after ten minutes of dancing in that hot, stuffy gym.”
    It was obvious he was trying to make her feel better.
    “In fact, it’s a good thing you weren’t there. Someone spiked the punchbowl with some kind of toxic moonshine, and every single girl there went bald within a week.”
    Emily couldn’t help but laugh at that a little. Miller was always so good at making her feel better.
    “And if you look close enough,” he flipped to the section with all the graduation pictures, “you’ll notice that all these girls are wearing wigs.”
    “No they’re not.”
    “None of them ever got their hair back. Don’t tell anyone, okay?”
    “What? No. That’s—”
    “And all their kids were born bald.”
    That did it. She busted out into a full-blown laugh. It wasn’t loud, and though it didn’t last long, it was the best laugh she’d had in months. When she was finished, she touched Miller’s hand. “Thank you.”
    Miller stared at her hand on his, which made her acutely aware that she couldn’t reach out and touch him like that anymore. She couldn’t ask him to be her safe place anymore. She pulled her hand back and