The House On The Creek Read Online Free PDF Page B

for sleep.
     
    Anticipating another slice for breakfast, Everett shed his sleeping bag and yanked on a worn pair of sweats. He wandered barefoot across the carpet to his window. Beyond the glass the clouds had disappeared, leaving blue sky and building heat. He could feel the sticky warmth even through the pane.
     
    Abruptly, he wanted a swim. A dip in the Creek and a look at the boat house. And, after he cooled his flesh, chocolate pie and a beer. Then some time to play with the massive TV he’d glimpsed earlier in the living room.
     
    Laughing at himself, feeling rebellious as the teenager who’d left his father’s house, Everett ran upstairs to his duffel and rummaged around until he found the bathing suit he’d almost forgotten to pack. He stripped without embarrassment before the front windows, pleased by the privacy the long driveway provided. Not a neighbor in sight. Nothing but trees and water to every side.
     
    He decided then that he’d never put up a single curtain. He liked the way the sunlight filled the house.
     
    Because his gurgling stomach decided it wouldn’t wait for breakfast after all, he took the beer and pie down across the back lawn, munching contentedly as he walked. The afternoon heat felt good for a handful of minutes before he began to sweat. By the time he stepped beneath the woods, he was more than ready for the chill of the Creek.
     
    Plate balanced in one hand, bottle dangling from his fingers, he paused, listening. And he could hear it, the faint rush of water from below.
     
    Everett began the careful climb down the hill, wincing as bare feet met twigs and stickers. He’d always gone barefoot through the woods and he didn’t intend to wimp out so late in the game, even if his toes had lost every callous he’d ever earned.
     
    He slid a little down the last few yards of the bank and then he saw the boat house. He thought she hadn’t touched it. The building looked just as he remembered, crumbling at the edges, solid at the core. Twelve years and it was still standing.
     
    What a colossal joke.
     
    He set his bottled and plate at the base of the foundation and ran his fingers over weathered brick. He’d never been able to work out where Abby saw the finger and toe holds she used to scale the thing. He wondered why she hadn’t bothered to rehab the little building.
     
    Did she hope, as he had, that the boat house would crumble away and eventually disappear?
     
    He turned his back to the bricks and walked to the edge of the Creek. The water ran high, nearly lapping against the front of the boat house. At its center the Creek appeared deep and green as the ocean. Trees and vines had grown up to overhang the water.
     
    He would have to find the time to cut the growth back, maybe make himself a small stretch of sandy beach.
     
    He waded a few steps into the clear water, and then dove neatly into the center of the current. The water whirl-pooled around him, washing sweat from his skin. He surfaced, sputtering, and brushed wet hair from his face.
     
    Treading water, he blinked away drops of water and looked around.
     
    The boat house loomed, sagging roof mottled. Leaves rustled overhead and dropped here and there to the surface of the water where they swirled in widening circles. He could hear the chirrups of startled sparrows and the buzz of a solitary mosquito. Deep in the green water, beneath his rapidly numbing toes, the current dragged.
     
    It hit him, at last, that he had come home. And the realization turned his stomach sour.
     
    Everett spent a good hour in the water, relearning the Creek’s old secrets and discovering new bends in the shore. By the time he reemerged onto try land he was shivering and ready for the heat of the air.
     
    He sat on a moss covered rock and sucked on his beer. The drink had gone warm and stale, but he finished it anyway.
     
    When the bottle was drained, he stood and collected his plate. He glanced over his shoulder one last time,