The Shelter Cycle Read Online Free PDF Page A

being surrounded by people who all believed the same, who were preparing for the same things, you know? So when we moved away, we lost all that. It was hard to know what to do.”
    â€œAnd you lost your folks, too.”
    â€œThat’s what I’m saying.” Francine shifted, straightened her legs. “Knowing we’re going to have the baby makes me think about them, my parents. It makes me remember everything, how it was.”
    Wells waited. In the past she’d never wanted to talk about her childhood. She laughed it off or changed the subject; if he waited long enough, he hoped, the time would come when she would tell him about it.
    â€œSeeing your friend, too,” he said.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œSeeing Colville makes you remember.”
    â€œYes,” she said.
    â€œHave you seen him since the other night?”
    â€œNo. I figure he’s gone back to Spokane or wherever.”
    â€œSpokane,” he said, “where you’re a raccoon.”
    â€œWhatever, Wells.”
    â€œI saw him,” he said.
    â€œColville?”
    â€œThe last couple mornings I’ve seen him. Just walking up the street.”
    â€œOur street?” she said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
    â€œYou have enough to worry about.”
    Francine didn’t say anything. The curtains shifted faint shadows along the ceiling. Kilo, in the kitchen, pushed his bowl across the linoleum, lapped water from his dish.
    â€œHe went to all the trouble to find you,” Wells said. “There must be some reason.”
    â€œMaybe that was the reason.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œJust to find me, to check up on me. I don’t know.”
    â€œCreepy.”
    â€œTo me, he just seemed lonely.”
    Francine reached back and pulled the blanket up over her shoulder, covering her ear. Her toes pressed down on the tops of his feet. Reaching for her hip, he rested his hand on her belly.
    â€œI wonder where that girl is now,” she said. “I wonder what her parents are doing.”
    â€œThey’re probably asleep.”
    â€œRight now?” she said. “With everything? They can’t sleep.”
    â€œWe’re the ones who are awake.”
    Francine reached back, patted his leg. “Let’s sleep now. Sleep.”
    â€œDo you think he knows anything about her?” Wells said. “Colville, I mean. He had that newspaper and everything. Maybe he knows something.”
    â€œHe’s probably just searching, like he said.”
    â€œSo he saw the raccoon, then read the newspaper, and all of a sudden he’s knocking on your door?”
    â€œWhat are you saying?”
    â€œDid you ever talk to anyone?” he said. “A reporter?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œIf your name was in that article,” he said, “then he’d know where you were, where to find you.”
    â€œWells,” she said. “Colville wouldn’t make it all up.”
    â€œHow do you know?”
    â€œI know him.”
    â€œYou knew him.” Wells rolled onto his back, stared up at the pale ceiling.
    â€œPeople,” she said, her voice drifting toward sleep. “People don’t change that much.”
    Â 
    â€¢
    Â 
    Wells awakened in the middle of the night, and Francine wasn’t in bed. He lay still, listening. Beyond, through the cold wind in the trees, he heard a tapping. Not rain; something else.
    He rolled over, checked the alarm clock: it was half past three. Pulling the covers aside, he stood and moved quietly into the hallway, careful where floorboards creaked. He went into the bathroom, the tile cold beneath his feet. The tapping was louder here. Francine was typing on the computer in the guest room, the room that would be the baby’s.
    He wondered if he should switch on the light, flush the toilet, so she would know he was awake and it wouldn’t seem that he was sneaking around. Back in the hallway he moved closer,