Read Online Alien Taste by Wen Spencer - Free Book Online

piece.”
    â€œThanks, Mom.”
    She turned, one arm holding Ukiah securely, to look up at Max still in the Hummer. “Where do you think you’re going?”
    Max tried his normal dodge. “I just ran Ukiah out. I was heading back to the office.”
    â€œYou look worse than Ukiah, Max. We’re grilling steaks for dinner tonight and having a picnic. Why don’t you stay, take a nap, and eat with us later?”
    She merely stood there, smiling up at him. As always, Max sighed, tucked the Hummer’s keys over the visor, and climbed down to join them on the lawn. “You made your potato salad?”
    â€œOf course I did.” She kissed Max on the cheek in greeting, wove her free hand into his arm and guidedthem toward the house. “I was making bread to celebrate the Mars landing, so the house is beastly hot, but it’s nice out on the porch.”
    Â 
    An hour later the house was silent.
    Mom Lara took Cally off to pick strawberries at a neighboring farm. Max was dozing on the porch hammock. Ukiah slipped into the house and cut off a still-warm heel of bread, smeared it heavily with blackberry jam, and ate it with a glass of cold milk. Done in from the night before, he went yawning up to his room.
    Mom Jo’s family once had been well-to-do, and the old house was a huge three-story Victorian with breezy rooms filled with sunlight. The entire attic was his, although he owned little more than a bed and a dresser. He had been too old for toys when Mom Jo found him; too illiterate for books; too solitary for most sports equipment. For a long time it had been one large empty echoing room. Mysteries and criminology books—spillover from his work—were starting to fill up the vast space. On the one tall wall, he had hung framed newspaper clippings, awards, commendations, and letters of thanks from the people he had found—lives he had saved. He fingered them, trying to drive away the strange hollowness the latest case formed in him.
    All these cases, he told himself, and I’ve only done good. One bad case shouldn’t taint it all.
    Memory was an odd thing. It felt like he had always been Max’s partner, but there was a definite day that he went from a part-time tracker to a full partner. Max had taken his moms by surprise by announcing that his promotion was a done deal. Memory being what it was, he also recalled that had been the last time his moms sent him to his room. He hadlain in bed listening to his moms and Max shout at one another, arguing about his future.
    â€œYou went behind our backs!” Mom Jo had shouted for the third time.
    â€œIf you want to see it that way, then there’s nothing I can say to change your view, but I didn’t.”
    â€œWhat gives you the right to—?”
    â€œCan we get off my rights and all this other shit and talk about what is important? He’s eighteen, or close to it as far as we can tell. What is he going to do for the rest of his life? What can an ex–wolf boy who has no education, no driver’s license, no birth certificate, no Social Security number—no legal identity at all—do? Nothing! What would happen to him if you both were killed in a freak accident? People would fall over themselves to adopt your daughter. Ukiah? There would be nothing. No one takes an eighteen-year-old in, the welfare system won’t recognize him, and if you don’t do something to get him set up in work, he won’t be able to take care of himself. You’re all he has right now. If there were a fire in the house tonight or a car accident tomorrow, he’d be screwed. I learned the hard way that shit happens unexpectedly.”
    They were shocked to silence. That was as close as Max ever got to talking about his dead wife. After several minutes of the silence, Max started again, much quieter.
    â€œHe needs a means of taking care of himself. I can take him on as a partner. He’d make good