The Last Days of Summer

The Last Days of Summer Read Online Free PDF Page B

Book: The Last Days of Summer Read Online Free PDF
Author: Vanessa Ronan
Mom’s pickup, right there on the seat, baked into the torn leather by the heat of the sun. Mom made her clean it up, and the gum got under her nails, stuck her fingers together, even got in her hair somehow, and Mom had to snip the tangle right out. Whole truck smelt like bubble gum for about a week. That’s how Katie smells, like warm, sticky, melted bubble gum. Joanne wishes she smelt like that.
    ‘Katie …’
    ‘Ummmmm.’
    The curtain blows and a warm breeze finds its way into the room, bits of moonlight creeping with it through the open window, catching and reflecting on the tiny flowers embroidered in the curtain lace. Too late for crickets now. Night dark and silent outside that screen. Even darker inside in the muggy room.
    ‘How long you think he’ll stay?’
    Katie is still, breath steady. For a second Joanne wonders if maybe she is asleep after all, but at length her sister answers. ‘I dunno.’
    ‘You scared of him?’
    Katie tosses onto her back. Her shadowed face turns to search for her sister’s eyes. ‘Are you?’
    ‘A little.’ Joanne’s voice barely a whisper. ‘I feel sorry for him, too.’
    ‘Why?’
    A lone coyote somewhere far off on the prairie calls, then falls silent to call again. Joanne wishes she could see Katie’s face. It feels strange lying here with her sister talking to the darkness like this. Feels strange that Katie’s listening to her, actually
listening
, and asking questions when it seems like lately all Katie tells her is to ‘piss off ’n’ shut it’.
    Eventually Joanne whispers, ‘He reminds me of that dog we found. The one by the road that’d been hit. You remember, Katie, how he was howling when Mom picked him up?’ Silence for a moment. Then, to the darkness, Joanne adds, ‘Maybe if he hadn’t died we coulda kept him.’
    Katie does not reply.
    When Mom first told them Uncle Jasper was coming home, she’d sat the girls down in the living room all formal, same way she did when Grandma finally passed. The mood in the room felt the same too. Except someone was coming home, and that felt even stranger. There’d never been anyone
to
come home before – people were always leaving. All summer she had heard folks in town
whispering about him and about him getting out, but when they noticed Joanne near they always fell silent. She had no real notion of what he’d done. Just bits and pieces to string together. When they’d been really small, Katie used to play detective with Joanne as they gathered Uncle Jasper clues. How the Saunders wouldn’t talk to Mama when they saw her in town. A photo of him when he was only young, his head thrown back, laughing, his arm around the shoulders of a smaller skinny boy. A letter they found up in the attic with only a court date on it, written from some attorney, folded and refolded as though read a thousand times. But Uncle Jasper had never been real before. Just a shadowy storybook figure from Mom’s childhood. A name forbidden to be spoken. A game they used to play. But when Mom sat them down and told them about how he was gonna come live with them, Uncle Jasper began to solidify. Joanne had felt cold all over, unsettled and itchy inside. ‘You girls is gonna have to be here for each other,’ Mom had said. ‘It won’t be easy havin’ him around, ’n’ I reckon it won’t be so easy for him comin’ back. I’m gonna need you girls, too. I’m gonna need you to be strong for me.’ And then Mom had held them both too long and too tight and real close.
    But still no one would tell Joanne what Uncle Jasper’d done, and Mom cancelled their newspaper subscription soon after she told the girls that he was coming home. It didn’t seem real. None of it seemed real. Even after cleaning out her room so he could have it. It wasn’t until earlier that night, when he’d been sitting on her old bed in her old room, looking at her with dark eyes, that Uncle Jasper had become real. He didn’t
look
like the gaunt man
of her
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