Read Online Gone for Good by Harlan Coben - Free Book Online

with Ralph, but to be fair, I really don't know him very well. They live in Seattle and almost never come back. Still, I can't help but remember when Melissa was going through her wild stage, sneaking around with local bad boy Jimmy McCarthy. What a gleam in her eye there had been back then. How spontaneous and outrageously, even inappropriately, funny she could be. I don't know what happened, what changed her, what had scared her so. People claim that it was just maturity. I don't think that's the full story. I think there was something more.
    Melissa we'd always called her Mel signaled me with her eyes. We slid into the den. I reached into my pocket and touched the photograph of Ken.
    "Ralph and I are leaving in the morning," she told me.
    "Fast," I said.
    "What's that supposed to mean?"
    I shook my head.
    "We have children. Ralph has work."
    "Right," I said. "Nice of you to show up at all."
    Her eyes went wide. "That's a horrible thing to say."
    It was. I looked behind me. Ralph sat with Dad and Lou Parley, downing a particularly messy sloppy joe, the cole slaw nestling in the corner of his lips. I wanted to tell her that I was sorry. But I couldn't. Mel was the oldest of us, three years older than Ken, five years my senior. When Julie was found dead, she ran away. That was the only way to put it. She upped with her new husband and baby and moved across the country. Most of the time I understood, but I still felt the anger of what I perceived as abandonment.
    I thought again about the picture of Ken in my pocket and made a sudden decision. "I want to show you something."
    I thought I saw Melissa wince, as if bracing for a blow, but that might have been projection. Her hair was pure
    Suzy Homemaker, what with the suburban-blond frost and bouncy shoulder-length probably just the way Ralph liked it. It looked wrong to me, out of place on her.
    We moved a little farther away until we were near the door leading to the garage. I looked back. I could still see my father and Ralph and Lou Parley.
    I opened the door. Mel looked at me curiously but she followed. We stepped onto the cement of the chilly garage. The place was done up in Early American Fire Hazard. Rusted paint cans, moldy cardboard boxes, baseball bats, old wicker, tread less tires all strewn about as though there'd been an explosion. There were oil stains on the floor, and the dust made it all drab and faded gray and hard to breathe. A rope still hung from the ceiling. I remembered when my father had cleared out some space, attached a tennis ball to that rope so I could practice my baseball swing. I couldn't believe it was still there.
    Melissa kept her eyes on me.
    I wasn't sure how to do this.
    "Sheila and I were going through Mom's things yesterday," I began.
    Her eyes narrowed a little. I was about to start explaining, how we had sifted through her drawers and looked at the laminated birth announcements and that old program from when Mom played Mame in the Little Livingston production and how Sheila and I bathed ourselves in the old pictures remember the one with King Hussein, Mel? but none of that passed my lips.
    Without saying another word, I reached into my pocket, plucked out the photograph, and held it up in front of her face.
    It didn't take long. Melissa turned away as if the photo could scald her. She gulped a few deep breaths and stepped back. I moved toward her, but she held up a hand, halting me. When she looked up again, her face was a total blank. No surprise anymore. No anguish or joy either. Nothing.
    I held it up again. This time she didn't blink.
    "It's Ken," I said stupidly.
    "I can see that, Will."
    "That's the sum total of your reaction?"
    "How would you like me to react?"
    "He's alive. Mom knew it. She had this picture."
    Silence.
    "Mel?"
    "He's alive," she said. "I heard you."
    Her response or lack thereof left me speechless.
    "Is there anything else?" Melissa asked.
    "What… that's all you have to say?"
    "What else is there to say,