The Rascal Read Online Free PDF Page B

ever known. And what few words Jeff had spoken to her did not amount to more than a paragraph. She walked through the cottage in a lonely self-embrace that was becoming a perpetual thing. The air of the cottage was chilled no matter how much wood was put in the fireplace. Jeff had chopped up the planks of wood left in the barn with more passion than she had seen from him in some time. Not all the wood stacked in the barn had rotted through, and it should have been enough to satisfy the small cottage. But the fire demanded more, licking each piece to ash with a deep, flamed tongue.
    Chloe had gone into Wicker to curb her boredom but found nothing of interest there. The people were eerily pleasant, but she was just one of a number of faces in the quaint seaside community. The town seemed to have repopulated itself since she and Jeff had first come through. There was certainly more vigor to it, like it had awakened from a slumber. A few of the townsfolk asked her how she liked living in the cottage. None of them referred to Lana other than calling her “the old movie star” or “the actress.” Behind their pleasant smiles, Chloe wondered if she saw the hint of mystery or even something more sinister. They were trying to figure her out.
    “I could never live in a place like that,” said Odette when she saw Chloe in her store again. Chloe guessed the quiet, larger-framed woman next to her was her sister, Alma. She stood back against a shelf of cigarettes with her hands folded in front of her as Odette chatted with Chloe at the register. Alma was a bloated replica of Odette, though she did not smile as much. She, it seemed, was for added atmosphere only. Not conversation.
    Chloe regarded the sisters with curiosity. “Why not? What’s wrong with the cottage?”
    Alma shuffled ever so slightly behind Odette, and as if this was the cue to reel back in something cast too far, Odette said, “It… it’s cold. It’s so cold up on that hill.”
    And while that was the bitter truth, Chloe tossed the conversation around in her head after she left the store until it sounded more menacing than it had been. How would she know how cold the cottage was? And that shuffle Alma had done behind Odette… What was that?
    That was two days gone, and while Chloe was once again suffering the pangs of boredom, she did not care to head back into Wicker. At last, tired of waiting around the cottage for Jeff to say more than three words to her, Chloe put on her jacket and headed up the hill to the big house. Perhaps she could make friends with the old movie star.
    “Wouldn’t that be something to tell the grandkids?”
    (The thought nearly stopped her in her tracks. One has to have children to have grandkids. And that was an impossibility. At least in biological terms. They could always adopt. Jeff’s brother, Ethan, had adopted a baby, after all.)
    The winds were fierce as she made her way past the trees and farther up the road. She tried to make out a face in every window of the big house or a silhouette up on the widow’s walk, but there was never anything there. Chloe didn’t suspect Lana was somewhere hidden behind a curtain and watching her come up the hill. Lana didn’t seem the type to hide from individuals, despite her living situation hiding from society.
    Chloe knocked, but there was no answer. The doorbell no longer worked. The porch creaked and moaned as she discreetly looked in the windows and called out for the actress. The rooms inside were dark, and she could barely see past the shadows. There were books in one of the rooms, though. She saw rows and stacks of large and cumbersome books. They looked too old to be of much use now. Who had time to turn pages when all one had to do was click Next on their reading device? Books were the leftover crumbs of a slower age.
    The garden, overgrown yet still majestic, drew Chloe over from the porch. She walked beneath the old dead vines on the trellis and past the crumbling sculptures.