Read Online After Her by Joyce Maynard - Free Book Online Page A

some kind of test they do where they can tell the difference, but you probably already know that.”
    Again, I said nothing. Mainly because I had nothing to say.
    â€œIf anybody ever tries to do that to you,” she said, “you should close your eyes. That way you won’t know what they look like and they might not think they had to kill you.
    â€œBut your father probably already told you that too,” she added. “And a whole bunch of other tips, I bet. I’d feel really safe having him around right now, with that killer on the loose.”
    I didn’t mention that my father wasn’t around, exactly. Not now, or before the murder either. The difference was that now we could see him on television.
    H E CALLED US THE NEXT day. It always felt like a big deal, getting a phone call from our father.
    â€œI guess you heard there’s been some trouble up on the mountain,” he said. “I don’t want you and your sister to be scared, but I know you two like to spend time up there. You need to steer clear of there for a while.”
    â€œWe always go on the mountain,” I told him. “That’s where we play.”
    Only to my father would I admit to playing. At school, most girls spoke of hanging out, but the truth was, I didn’t have friends at school, and neither did my sister. Who we had was each other, and we still played together all the time. Mostly on the mountain.
    â€œJust until we get this guy locked up, I need you to keep away from there,” he said. “You need to promise me you’ll stay around the yard.”
    I said we would, but with my fingers crossed. There was no way Patty and I were going to remain inside all day on our long-awaited summer vacation. Some kids—Alison Kerwin, for instance, and most of the girls in my class at school—hung out at the mall, or the rec center pool, unless they were off at camp or taking trips with their families to Disneyland, or Lake Tahoe, but in Patty’s and my case, it was up to us to make up ways to pass the time. The mountain was our favorite place.
    â€œWhat are we supposed to do, Dad?” I said. Maybe I was hoping he’d suggest we spend a little time with him at his apartment in the city, though I knew this was unlikely.
    â€œBake cookies. Go to the library. Play Monopoly,” he said. “You’re smart girls, you’ll think of something. Help your mother. Learn Morse code.”
    â€œWhat did that guy do to the girl on the mountain?” I asked him. “Was it someone that used to be in love with her, and then she dumped him?”
    â€œYou don’t need to be thinking about those things, Farrah,” he told me.
    He called me that a lot in those days, not that I resembled the actress in any way. But Patty and I liked to pretend we were Charlie’s Angels. Sometimes, if we had made up a scenario where we pretended one of our neighbors was really a bank robber, or an international spy, I’d tell her, “Go get him, Bree,” and she’d take off like a shot, though of course she never actually used her jujitsu moves on anybody but our father or me.
    â€œDo you have some good clues?” I said. Our father didn’t talk about his cases, but asking was a way of feeling close to him, and special.
    â€œDon’t fill your head up with this mess, baby,” he said. “Take it from a guy who does. It’s not good for you.”
    â€œI know you’ll get him,” I said. “You always do.”
    â€œJust stay off that mountain,” he told me.

 

    Chapter Seven
    T he spot where they’d found the body of Charlene Gray lay on the side of the mountain close to where we lived—a part frequented by hikers, though there were fewer of them in those days than later, when the idea of suiting up with special poles and shoes and shirts made out of interesting materials that didn’t absorb sweat got really fashionable. You