Read Online Endless by Amanda Gray - Free Book Online

dad was pointing out. Her dad seemed at ease, comfortable in a way she hadn’t seen him with anyone other than Morgan.
    Huh. She looked more closely. Were they flirting ? It was hard to tell. They were smiling a lot and sitting kind of close, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. Jenny gave up trying to figure it out and headed for the stairs, wondering if she could find the attic room with the pretty window. She was so not ready to think about her dad dating. Her mom might have died a long time ago, but as far as Jenny knew, her dad had never even had coffee with someone since then. She just needed to get her head around the possibility, that’s all.
    She climbed the stairs at the front of the house, listening for the strains of Ben on his piano. Nothing. The house was quiet except for the occasional hum of conversation from the kitchen below.
    Reaching the landing, Jenny saw a set of stairs pulled down and hanging from the ceiling at the end of the hall. Clare and Ben had probably been cleaning. No one wanted to buy a house with a creepy, junk-filled attic, and it sounded like they needed to sell fast.
    Jenny crept past the half-open door to Ben’s room, stopping in front of the stairs. Hesitating, she peered into the blackness above her head, listening. It was as quiet as the rest of the house.
    She put one foot gently on the lowest tread of the stairs, testing them for both strength and sound. Then she headed up into the darkness.
    The stairs felt solid enough. And so far, so good on the squeaks, too. She continued, stepping carefully since there weren’t any handrails and she was holding her dad’s six-hundred-dollar camera.
    The light from the hallway receded as she made her way up the stairs, slowly enveloped in the murky darkness of the attic. When she got to the top, she stepped gingerly onto the floorboards, hoping they were as well maintained as the stairs. She peered into the gray light, watching the dust motes dance in the sun fighting its way in through the small, arched window she’d seen from the ground.
    Her eyes adjusted, and she scanned the room, fascinated by the strange shapes created by stacked boxes and trunks, the ghostly forms of sheet-covered furniture. Lifting the camera, she changed the settings and turned on the flash. She wanted to get a shot of the old hat box near the wall, a half-crushed top hat spilling from inside. Except there was something else there, too. Something … bigger. She refocused, zooming in even closer.
    Ben’s eyes, appraising and not at all pleased, stared back at her through the viewfinder.
    “Don’t tell me you have to measure the attic, too.” Sarcasm dripped from his voice.
    She lowered the camera, letting her breath out in one loud gasp. “God! You scared the hell out of me.”
    “I’d say I’m sorry,” he sneered. “Except this is my house. You’re the one who shouldn’t be here.”
    She figured she should probably keep her cool. Then she decided against it.
    Crossing the attic, she stopped in front of him, glaring. “Are you always such a jerk?”
    “Are you always so nosy?” he muttered, his blondish hair flopping forward into his eyes as he rifled through some papers on his lap.
    She thought about possible answers to the question, finally deciding on honesty. “Not always.”
    He looked up, and for a split second she saw interest in his blue eyes. Then, he lowered them back to the papers in his hand.
    “What have you got there?” she asked.
    “I have no idea,” he mumbled. “It’s in some kind of foreign language.”
    “Can I see?”
    She had no idea why she was trying to be friendly after the way he’d acted, except that he seemed kind of lonely. And she understood lonely. She even understood the way it sometimes made you push people away when it was the last thing you really needed or wanted.
    He shrugged, passing the papers to her.
    He was right. Not only was it in another language, but the words on the paper were handwritten