The House On The Creek Read Online Free PDF

shoved in his pockets, looking up at her as she balanced on the edge of his father’s garage. His eyes had been as she remembered, deep and still, but full of a new emotion she didn’t recognize.
     
    “He said he wanted to come back to his roots.”
     
    “His roots?”
     
    Abby hesitated, eyeing her young son, and then shrugged. “Yeah, his roots. I guess you could say the house used to be his.”
     
    Chris gaped. “What?”
     
    “He used to live there,” Abby clarified. “His name’s Everett. He’s Edward’s son.”
     
    “Edward had a son?”
     
    Abby nodded, amused in spite of herself by Chris’s baffled expression. “He and Ev didn’t get along so well. They decided not to live together any more. He moved out to Seattle. A long time ago. He’s all grown up, now.”
     
    “Everett,” Chris repeated, giving the name a Southern roll. “Did you know him?”
     
    “When I was a kid.”
     
    “Can I meet him?”
     
    Abby shook her head before she thought.
     
    “Why not?” Her son whined, instantly aggrieved.
     
    “I’m sure he’s very busy.”
     
    “Doing what?”
     
    Abby shrugged. “Computer stuff. I think he does computer stuff.” And she could have bitten her tongue.
     
    Chris’s face lit up. “Computer stuff! What kind of computer stuff?”
     
    “I don’t know. I don’t remember.” But she remembered the way Ev had looked at her as she fled his touch, fled his father’s house, the check burning a hole in her pocket.
     
    “Geez, Mom.”
     
    “Sorry.”
     
    They drove in silence until the thump of Chris’s sneakers against her tote grew vicious.
     
    “Stop that.”
     
    Chris folded his arms over his chest. “I wonder if he has an iPad. Seattle. I bet he does. Nobody in this hick town has even seen one.”
     
    The bitterness in her son’s voice made Abby glance in surprise from the road. “Williamsburg is not a hick town.”
     
    “Mom!”
     
    “Chris!” Abby whined back, mimicking her son’s wounded tone. When he refused to smile, she sighed. “Most of the buildings even have electricity.”
     
    He softened some. “But not plumbing.”
     
    “Maybe next century.” She took one hand from the wheel and touched his shoulder. “Now tell me about the Louisiana Purchase.”
     
    At last he relented and began to chatter. Abby relaxed and listened with attention to her son’s lecture, determined to focus on the moment, on the enthusiasm on her remarkable child’s face.
     
    Determined to forget, for the moment, about Everett Anderson and the alarm he caused her.
     

Chapter Four
     
    EVERETT WOKE JUST BEFORE NOON , startled from deep sleep by the squeaks of Virginia’s thriving bird population. He rubbed at his face, briefly confused by the sounds of his childhood. Expecting the thump of Edward’s boots overhead.
     
    Then he smelled new paint and heard the murmur of the ceiling fan above his head. His pulse slowed. He blinked up at the square of sunlight that fell from his window, and touched the carpet, and found that he could smile.
     
    He’d slept soundly, muddled by time zones and stuffed with food. Cold cuts and chocolate pie. The pie had been on a cake plate at the very back of the fridge and he’d laughed when he found it.
     
    That last summer, Abby Ross had been determined to become a famous pastry chef. She’d planned to move to New York and work in an elite restaurant. She had talked endlessly of the big city adventures she knew she’d have and she had baked pie after pie on her ma’s old wood burning stove.
     
    But each baking attempt had ended in disaster. He still remembered her temper when crust refused to set and filling burnt. Not long after she reduced her final pie to ashes, Abby stopped talking about New York.
     
    He thought she’d finally mastered the oven, because the pie he’d found in his new fridge looked home made and tasted of heaven. He had downed a good portion of the treat before finally descending into the basement