Read Online Crooked by Laura McNeal - Free Book Online Page B

proud of the way her father looked and dressed. He almost always wore nice leather deck shoes, khaki pants, and a solid Ivy League shirt in pale blue, pink, or yellow—Clara called it his uniform. But tonight her father looked rumpled and worn down.
    To cheer him up, Clara told her father about Mrs. Harper, but he hardly listened. She didn’t mention Amos MacKenzie. She thought her father might disapprove of her going to the hospital or think the whole thing was strange, which it was, but somehow it was hers, personally. “Mrs. Harper said she’d hire me again,” Clara said. “She paid me fifteen dollars.”
    â€œThat’s good,” her father said, as if he were thinking about something else. He shuffled through the stack of mail on the kitchen table, then tied an apron over his blue shirt and diced vegetables while the rice slowly popped its lid up and down. The kitchen windows steamed over, the smells of coconut and garlic steeped sharply into everything, but her mother didn’t come home.
    Finally, when everything was not just ready but growing cold, her father called Kaufmann’s. When he identified himself, he waited while he was transferred to someone else. Several minutes passed. Her father’s body seemed to be slowly going limp. Then suddenly he snapped to. “Yes, this is Thurmond Wilson. I’m trying to find out if my wife, Angelica, is still at the store.”
    What followed was short periods of her father listening and saying nothing except “What?” and, once, “Now wait a minute.” He was quiet for another few moments before he said, “And that was it? She didn’t say anything to anyone?”
    He glanced at Clara, who lowered her eyes.
    Then her father stood listening for an even longer time, and when he next spoke, it was in a tired voice. “And you say she left the store at two this afternoon?” He waited, listened, and said, “Well, I appreciate your candor. And I understand”—her father hesitated, and Clara knew he was suddenly aware of her standing behind him, listening—“your position regarding her continued employment.”
    After he hung up, there was a long, still moment before he turned to Clara. His face had changed. It looked gray and waxy, like Clara’s grandfather had looked in his coffin. “She hasn’t been at the store since two o’clock,” her father said. “Your mother just walked off.”
    Clara glanced at the kitchen clock: 8:35. “Are you going to call the police?” she said. “Maybe there’s been an accident.”
    Her father, almost more to himself than to her, said, “I think I’ll call her sister first.” But he didn’t call from the kitchen. He went upstairs to his office and closed the door. Almost an hour passed before he came back down. He was still wearing the apron over his shirt, and his face still looked deathly gray.
    â€œYour mother is going to stay at Aunt Marie’s for a while,” he said.
    A store of thoughts Clara didn’t even know she had came flooding out of her. “So she’s really going to do it. She’s going to leave us here and run off to that teaching job in France.” She felt her face twisting up as if she were going to cry.
    Her father stared at Clara closely. “What teaching job?”
    Clara managed to clamp back the tears. She narrowed her eyes. “In France. Or Japan. Aunt Marie knows all about it. Mom talks about it with her all the time.”
    Her father tried to act like this wasn’t news to him, but Clara could tell it was. “Look, Clara, your mother’s not running off to France or Japan or anywhere else. She’s upset right now, but she isn’t abandoning you.”
    Clara expected him to add, “or me,” but he didn’t.
    As she was scraping the uneaten food down the disposal, Clara remembered her mother conversing with