Read Online Mammoth Secrets by Ashley Elizabeth Ludwig - Free Book Online Page B

the ankle deep water. “River trout know how to fight.”
    At last, through the lens of the surface, they saw it swimming.
    Lilah laughed, turned a quick I-told-you-so grin, and looped the net under the foot-long rainbow trout.
    Trading pole for net, Jake scooped up the trout. It flashed in the sunlight, scales reflected a brilliant rainbow, wide gills gasping, hook looped clean through its lip. “Beautiful...” He breathed hard, smiling like a little boy.
    “Good enough to keep?”
    “Nah. Let’s let him get bigger.” He freed the creature and set it back into the water. With a flick of fins it disappeared faster than it had arrived. “Get you next year!”
    “Sign of a confident fisherman.” She returned to her pole, fingering her reel in a slow twist.
    “Not confident.” He shrugged and re-baited his pole with a struggling minnow from the bucket. “Just not in that big a hurry to fill up our stringer.”
    “Ah.” The smile bloomed within, though she did her best not to show it. “Sure your parish won’t mind if you sit here with a fallen woman?”
    “What fallen woman?” He winked. “There’s no one here but us. We’re friends, remember?”
    “Friends.” She elbowed his ribs. “It’s kind of nice. Here you know my deep, dark past and want to hang with me, anyway.”
    He said nothing, but she sensed him pull back, as if a veil fell over his thoughts, a shadow cast over the perfect afternoon. Why had she opened her mouth?
    “So. About that dinner?” he offered, and behind his hooded gaze, she saw something she almost missed. Hope.
    “Sure, why not.”
    He sat taller, but her shoulders sank with the hornet’s nest of trouble she was about to cause. Nana embarrassed her at the diner, so her reply would be missing Saturday night’s family meal. Relaxing to the idea, Lilah reeled in, recast. “If we’re gonna have anything to eat, no more tossing back.”
    They turned back to their own lines, their own thoughts, as the sunlight played on the rush of water.
     
     
     
     

11
     
    The Saturday evening rush settled, Eden washed up, ready to go. “You good to close, Ray?” Eden finished applying lipstick in the small hand mirror. She pressed her lips into a full, glossy pout.
    “Yes, Edie.” He sprayed water over a tray of white ceramic dishes.
    “Thought Lilah’d be back to help. Bein’ Saturday night, after all.”
    “No big deal.” He trayed the plates and then shoved them into the industrial washer. “I’ll set this to run and be out behind you in ten minutes. Half hour, tops.”
    “Thanks.” Eden tossed him the set of gold keys. “Pharmacy’ll be closing soon. Nana’s expecting me any minute. You know how Papaw gets if we’re late.” Her gaze dimmed.
    “Live by schedule...” The laughter vanished from Raymond’s eyes. “Right. You get on, now.”
    Eden picked up the pie box and hightailed it across the street to the drugstore. The checkers board game was folded and pieces stacked. She held the door for stodgy, old Martha Anderson, a prescription bag clutched in her hand.
    “Evening, Mrs. A.”
    “Oh, hey there, Eden.” Martha’s doughy face folded into a smile, she pushed at gray curls that sproinged from what looked like a healthy shellacking of hair spray. “How’s your Papaw?”
    “Same. I’m on my way up there. I’ll tell them you said hello.”
    Martha’s throat rattled as she cleared it, her circus tent flowered shirt rustled with the cough that followed.
    The pharmacist’s bald head tilted to the sound, but no one else browsed the low aisles of thinly stocked first aid kits, stomach remedies, and hair dye. Mrs. Anderson lowered her voice anyway. “You just tell them not to worry if we’re not in church. I’ll be visiting my sister over in Jonesboro on Sundays for a spell.”
    “It’s not like you and Mr. Anderson to miss a Sunday service.”
    Hiking up her walking shorts, she shoved her pill bag into her satchel. “Donald was at the meeting last