Read Online Wherever Grace Is Needed by Elizabeth Bass - Free Book Online

you leaving the store with what’s-his-name.”
    “Ben.”
    “Right. I thought it was weird. The only other times she mentions the store is when she’s complaining about how you’re a slave to it. Now when you finally do get away . . .”
    “It’s because I’m home. In Austin, I mean. She and my dad—they’ve never been on the best of terms.”
    Natalie snorted. “No kidding! I can’t imagine Mom marrying an old man. She must have been really desperate or something.”
    “He wasn’t so old back then. Just forty-five.”
    “Like I said—an old man.”
    Grace bit her lip. “I’d better go. I’ll call Mom back later.”
    “ ’Kay. Good night.”
    Grace said good-bye and hung up, feeling even more disconnected than before.
    “Can I help you?”
    At the sound of a woman’s voice just behind her, Grace spun on her heel. She had spotted this woman earlier working in her yard. The blonde, who appeared to be in her mid-thirties, lived two houses down on the other side of her dad’s property, next to the white two-story house where the weird kid named Dominic lived. She wore a sunny yellow linen tank top, white shorts, and espadrilles. Not exactly the clothes Grace would have chosen for working in the yard.
    “My name’s Muriel Blainey.” She extended her head forward and tilted it slightly like a curious bird. “I’ve seen you going door to door. Is there some sort of problem?”
    The neighborhood watch, Grace presumed. She introduced herself and explained, “My father’s dog has disappeared.”
    “Iago? I am so sorry! Was this before or after the accident?”
    “I think it must have been just after,” Grace said.
    “Well, the poor doggie hasn’t been around my house,” Muriel informed her, making a sympathetic pouty face. “Have you tried the animal shelters yet?”
    “I called them.” The creases in Muriel’s forehead alerted her to the fact that this was the wrong answer. “But I guess I’ll go in person this afternoon. Of course.”
    “I assume you’ve called every vet in the phone book by now.”
    “Well, not every one.”
    Not good enough, Muriel’s expression said. “And you have flyers?”
    Grace handed one over.
    “Every pole should have one,” Muriel instructed her. “And all the local businesses. If you need to borrow a staple gun, my husband has one. He’s away on business in California, so it’s not as if he’ll be needing it this afternoon. I’ll get it for you right now and we can have all your flyers out in a jiffy.”
    Grace felt the negligible weight of the small packet of thumbtacks in her pocket. Totally inadequate. Everything about this woman made her feel unprepared. “I think Dad might have one somewhere,” she said, edging away. She couldn’t shake the alarming suspicion that if she actually accepted Muriel’s aid, she wasn’t going to get away from her until the very last flyer was stapled to the very last phone pole.
    “I’ll knock on your door if I need it,” Grace promised her. “Thanks.”
    She hurried to the house and shut the door. Staple gun! A normal person would have kept his toolbox in the garage, but this house had no garage and her father was definitely not normal. She searched the closets, the little mudroom to the side of the kitchen, and even the window seat in the dining room, which had been used as a junk repository for decades. Nothing. Finally she remembered the upstairs storage closet.
    Growing up, she’d always loved the closet because it resembled a little room. It even had its own tiny window. She’d always imagined setting up a sort of clubhouse in it. Not that she, a lone kid visiting from halfway across the country, had any friends to invite to join this club. . . .
    Forgetting the staple gun, she picked her way over storage boxes and old vacuum cleaners and made her way to the window. It was just a tiny vertical rectangle, but it had the same woodwork and double panes of glass that the windows downstairs had. Beneath a