Read Online Darkness peering by Alice Blanchard - Free Book Online Page B

hadn't been able to locate it yet.
    Rachel's clothes reeked, the fabric clammy with sweat. A fetid aroma
of wet cardboard and rotten lettuce filled the car, the kind of smell
that lingered for days. She'd been on her way home to take a hot bath,
but that would have to wait.
    Cruising the familiar neighborhood, she glanced into windows of passing
houses and felt a twinge of nostalgia for their buttery light, their
illusion of safety; she caught a glimpse of a mother tugging a curtain
shut, a child changing channels on the TV, cozy scenes of domestic
bliss she'd left behind forever like old children's books. People
didn't realize how vulnerable they were. If they knew Flowering
Dogwood the way she knew it, they'd turn their homes into armed
fortresses.
    Now she came up behind a tractor hauling a load of manure, doing
fifteen miles an hour, and flashed her high beams until the driver
pulled over to let her pass. She waved at Neal Fliss, an old friend of
her brother's. They hadn't spoken in years, not since Billy had gone
off to Amherst, and now Neal was a dairy farmer like his old
man--exactly what he'd once sworn he'd

    never be--and married with three kids. He was shirtless, smoking a
cigarette, baseball cap smashed flat on his head, and she couldn't
believe she'd once had a major crush on him.
    Pumpkin Run Road traveled through dense woods of white pine and birch,
their tangled branches catching in her headlight beams. The road
slowly descended into the rolling valley, a stunning view of the White
Mountains looming on the horizon. As she approached Holderness Street,
the white-steepled First Congregational Church rose above the town
center, a lovely green fronted by elegant Federal and Colonial-style
houses. This was the nicest part of downtown, the part that poverty,
progress and unemployment hadn't touched.
    Rachel pulled into the parking lot, then crossed the blacktop toward
the church's back door. The September moon was a sliver, clouds like
lichens growing over a granite-colored sky. Rachel knocked on the
door, and the Reverend answered. "Wow, that was fast."
    "Hi, Reverend."
    "C'mon in, Rachel." Hughie Boudreau had once been a cop, way back when
her father was still alive, but at some point along the way he'd had a
spiritual awakening and had decided to join the ministry. His Sunday
sermons were quite popular, according to what she heard. At
forty-five, Hughie had a shock of polar bear-white hair, dainty
features and a restless gaze that had once upset her, but now she
rather liked him. The Reverend Hughie Boudreau had presided over her
mother's funeral three years ago.
    "We got a call about a dead body," Rachel said.
    "One of my homeless folks. Right this way." He led her through his
private residence toward the rear of the church, and they passed his
wife, a petite brunette with a pert smile, now talking on the phone.
She waved at Rachel, who waved back.
    "You remember that little girl who got murdered about eighteen years
ago?" the Reverend asked as he opened the carved mahogany stairwell
door. "The little girl with Down's syndrome?"
    "Vaguely," Rachel said, recalling how she and her friends used to tease
Melissa D'Agostino. If you got too close, you could smell her, people
said. She smelled dirty. She sucked her thumb and looked like a baby
monster. And once, in the girls' room at Fischer Elementary School,
Melissa had asked Rachel in a plaintive voice, "Would you be my
friend?" In response, Rachel had run away.
    "Well," Hughie continued, "the gentleman downstairs is her father."
    The basement of the First Congregational Church had been converted into
a homeless mission of sorts, partitioned off in an attempt to provide
privacy for the dozen or so men, women, and children who'd taken up
residence and were now sleeping soundly on their cots. They tiptoed
past this snoring flock, detoured through a spotless kitchen into a
small private room where an elderly man lay