What We Found Read Online Free PDF Page B

Copying Ricky was my backup. I wasn’t sure if he’d caught on to that or just thought he was doing Mom a favor by notifying her when a message came in. It was a complicated system, but it worked for me.
    She sniffed the air and turned her scowl to the bag on the coffee table. “What is that?”
    “Fried chicken. And potato salad and coleslaw.”
    “Cool!” Ricky leaned forward and peered in the top of the bag. As my mother opened her mouth, I tapped Ricky’s back and said quickly, “Take it into the kitchen and set the table.” He dashed from the room.
    I stood, but Mom blocked my way. “I expect you to fix healthy meals, not bring home junk. Ricky’s fat enough as it is.”
    “He’s fine, Mom. He’s still growing. An occasional treat won’t kill him.” I took petty pleasure in the fact that my extra five inches forced her to look up at me. I had inherited my mother’s delicate bone structure and bland coloring. So far as I knew, only my height came from the father I’d never met.
    Ricky was his father all the way. And that was something our mother couldn’t forgive.
    We got through dinner somehow. Mom peeled the skin off her chicken, skipped the potato salad, and snapped comments at Ricky about his table manners, which were better than any man or boy I’d ever known. Ricky chattered, seemingly immune to the moods around him, or simply so used to Mom that he thought this was normal. Maybe I should have been grateful that he didn’t show more obvious scars from being raised by a woman who hated men. But the scars had to be there, so I was determined to be there too, trying to balance out my mother’s influence.
    I picked at my food. My stomach rumbled, but somehow hunger wasn’t translating into appetite. I had to figure out what I was going to tell them. Part of me wanted to say nothing, but the story would come out eventually. It would be worse if Mom heard it from someone else.
    Ricky cleared the table and started washing the dishes. Before Mom could start in on me again, I said, “I need to change,” and headed for my room.
    I stripped out of my clothes and stuffed them in my laundry bag, grimacing as they touched my other laundry. I wanted to throw out the clothes I’d worn that day, burn them even, so they couldn’t taint anything else, but I couldn’t afford to lose a good office outfit.
    I stood in the room where I’d lived from age eleven to seventeen. I hadn’t gotten around to redecorating, so it had the same faded posters of kittens and puppies on the wall, the same pink and gray quilt on the single bed. I wanted to burrow under that quilt and hide. I wanted to run screaming from the house and never return. I was back where I had started. I’d thought I was stronger, that I could make my own life and help Ricky get started on his.
    I’d made nothing but mistakes.
    I pulled on sweatpants and a T-shirt and forced myself to leave the room before the urge to lie down overwhelmed me.
    I stepped into the living room as a news bulletin interrupted the local broadcast. A woman’s body had been found at the resort.
    She had been identified.
    They showed a picture of her. Not as I’d seen her, but as she had been in life. And then I recognized her.
    I’d never met her, but I’d seen the “Missing” fliers around town. The newscaster reminded me of the details: Bethany Moore, twenty-seven, missing for almost a month. I remembered glancing at the poster in the bank window, feeling vague sympathy for the family and hoping the woman had only run away. I hadn’t paid too much attention, because of course I’d never see her myself. Those things just didn’t happen.
    Her body had been found by “a resort employee” in the woods. She’d been identified by her brother. I let out a shaky breath. They hadn’t named me.
    They cut from a shot of the woods across the golf course to the sober face of the newscaster. “Ms. Moore’s disappearance has been under investigation for several weeks.