Read Online Blue Diary by Alice Hoffman - Free Book Online Page B

dust his hands with baking soda to ease the pain, and tonight he feels the same way all over again. She can burn him with one word. Even now.
    â€œI know Jorie better than anyone,” Charlotte says. “I can handle it.”
    In fact, she has handled everything in her life. Charlotte is not and never has been the sort of person to say please any more than she is likely to say thank you, and she has very little pity for the meek and the mild. Still, tonight she feels a strange sort of empathy for Barney, with his expensive, ill-fitting suit and his Lexus parked at the curb. Moonlight spills across the lawns on Maple Street and what looks like little stars are floating right past, a wave of milkweed spores, luminous and mysterious as they drift through the dark. Charlotte can see that she’s bruised Barney Stark somehow. He’s the kind of man who wears his heart on his rumpled sleeve.
    â€œAll I mean is that you don’t have to waste your time here anymore. I’ll take care of everything.” Echoing Kat Williams, she adds, “Go home.”
    Charlotte uses her key and slips inside. It’s an odd sensation, standing in the front hallway of the Fords’ house. Charlotte always goes around the back, and for this reason it seems that she’s stepped into a stranger’s home.
    â€œJorie?”
    Charlotte doesn’t want to be one of those statistics, some neighborly soul shot through the heart when all she’s doing is trying to help.
    â€œAnybody here? Its me, Charlotte.”
    She goes into the kitchen, where she finds a box of cereal left out on the counter, along with two unwashed bowls. A mess such as this isn’t like Jorie, who is always so house-proud. As Charlotte continues on, she doesn’t have to look outside to know that Barney Stark is still there, waiting to make certain no one needs him before he goes home. A man such as this is a mystery to Charlotte. Why, he’s as much a riddle as the Sphinx in the desert. She cannot even imagine what it might be like to have a man who would stand by you, who’d love you for whoever you are.
    The staircase is dim, and Charlotte keeps a hand on the wall to guide her. As she goes up to Jorie and Ethan’s bedroom, she feels a bit like a Peeping Tom, treading softly, roaming through the place uninvited, even though the house belongs to Jorie, who’s closer to Charlotte than she is to her own sister. The night is so strange she can’t help but wonder if they’ve all been hypnotized. There have been cases of people who shared the same dream, and maybe that’s what’s happened. Perhaps Charlotte and Barney Stark and Jorie are asleep, entering freely into one another’s dreams, walking down the same imagined empty streets, watching the same nonexistent news broadcasts, having conversations they would never be party to during the shining hours of daylight. If one of them wakes, surely the rest are bound to follow, jolted out of their slumber, panting for breath, frightened by how close they’ve come to disaster.
    But when Charlotte peers into the bedroom, Jorie doesn’t have her head on the pillow, her breathing shallow, the way a dreamer’s is whenever the dream feels as real as everyday life, dreams of bread and butter, and of lives gone wrong, and of quiet houses where couples sleep through the night. No, this is no dream. Jorie is sitting on the edge of the bed, wearing the same clothes she’s had on since morning, her face drained, her beautiful golden hair lank as straw. Collie is the one who’s asleep in the big bed, but anyone can tell his rest is fitful, for he turns and pulls the quilt closer, then groans, a fluttering boy noise that causes a catch in Charlotte’s own throat.
    â€œWhat you heard isn’t true.” Jorie’s voice is low, so as not to wake her son. All the same, there’s something in her tone that sounds desperate.
    â€œOf course it