Read Online Double Take by Melody Carlson - Free Book Online Page A

Aunt Rachel—words like too lazy, too fat, too old, too clumsy . . . she’d never find a husband. As a result, Anna had probably lost some respect for her aunt. Then being in Aunt Rachel’s home and seeing that her housekeeping skills were sloppy at best, her cooking just so-so, her children ill-behaved . . . well, Anna had come to her own conclusions. Still, she had wondered why Aunt Rachel hadn’t tried harder to make friends within her community. Or perhaps she had tried. Perhaps the other women simply didn’t like her. But this wasn’t Anna’s problem today. Right now she needed to get ready for her own challenges. She opened up the notes and started to read.
    Soon after, Anna heard a jangling sound. It seemed to be coming from Madison’s purse. She opened it to see the little purse phone all lit up. She picked it up and stared, trying to figure out what to do. Hadn’t Madison meant to take it with her?
    One of the little squares said talk, so Anna pushed it and said, “Hello?” Perhaps it was Madison, calling to tell her that she’d changed her mind.
    “Madison?” a male voice said.
    Anna bit her lip. “Yes?”
    “Are you okay?”
    “Yes.” Anna glanced around to see if anyone was looking at her. She felt so strange talking into this tiny purse phone, not even knowing who she was speaking to.
    “You don’t sound okay. Are you still mad at me?”
    “No,” Anna said slowly.
    “I told you I’m sorry, Maddie. Really sorry. Can’t you find it in your heart to forgive me?”
    She didn’t know what to say. She’d been taught from an early age to forgive everyone, but she suspected this was Madison’s boyfriend, Garret.
    “Can’t you give me one more chance?”
    “I don’t know . . .”
    “Where are you anyway?”
    “On a bus.” She looked out the window where the countryside seemed to be changing or getting tighter, because the houses were closer and the fields were smaller—or was it simply because the bus was going so fast?
    “A bus? Where are you going?”
    “New York.”
    “Where are you right now?”
    She told him the name of the town they’d just passed through, and when he asked why she was there, she got nervous and confessed she’d been in Allentown, but that only increased his curiosity. What had Madison said she should do about Garret? That she should dump him out? That didn’t sound quite right, but her notes were folded up and zipped in a pocket of her purse right now. “I am very busy, Garret,” she said crisply.
    “So you won’t forgive me?”
    Anna frowned. Really, what could it hurt to forgive someone? “Yes,” she said slowly, “I do forgive you. Now I must go.”
    “You sound kinda weird, Maddie. Are you really okay?”
    “Yes. I said I am fine. Now I need to say goodbye.” She pulled the phone away from her ear, wondering how to turn this thing off.
    “Wait—wait!” She could hear his voice still calling to her.
    She put the phone back to her ear. “What do you want now?”
    “I want to make it up to you, Maddie. What can I do?”
    Anna remembered now that Madison had said Garret was persistent. “Promise to never do that again.”
    “Sure, of course I won’t. But I need to do something else.”
    “You need to say goodbye,” she told him. She pulled the phone away and looked closely at the buttons. Although she could still hear his voice, she pushed the one that said end . That seemed a good choice. End the conversation and end the relationship with the cheating boyfriend—end of story.
    Thinking about boyfriends sent her mind straight to Jacob. She looked at the purse phone still in her hand and wondered if this might somehow help her to find him. Was it possible that he had a phone too? If so, how did one go about finding the right number? How did one go about locating someone in a big city like New York?
    She looked out the window and was surprised to see that she was no longer in the country at all. Now there were buildings of different