Read Online Perfect Couple by Jennifer Echols - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jennifer Echols
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Inside the house was cool and dark with a faint scent of age and the sound of Mom’s angry language. As I shut the heavy door behind me, outside was bright and smelled like flowers. Tree frogs screamed in the trees. I skittered back to our little house and dug through Mom’s office files until I found my prescription, wondering how I’d ever thought I could spend the hot holiday at home.
* * *
The locally owned drugstores in the old-fashioned downtown around the corner from the B & B couldn’t help me today. To get my contact prescription filled on Labor Day, I needed the discount store with the optical shop out on the highway. And that meant I needed Granddad’s car.
I knocked on the door of his bungalow, just as I had yesterday and the day before, holding my breath until he answered. He drove to the grocery store once a week, and sometimes he swung by the art supply store to pick up more oil paints. As far as I knew, those were the only times he left the house where he’d lived forever and where Mom had grown up.
Granddad and Mom argued a lot. She told him shewanted to make sure he was happy and safe, and he said she was being a nosy busybody. He told her she needed to get rid of that no-good cheat of a husband once and for all, and she said he was being an overbearing jerk. They were both right. In the middle of these fights, I was the only one checking on him. Sawyer lived next door, and Granddad paid him to cut the grass, but I doubted he thought to conduct a welfare check when Granddad didn’t leave the house for days on end. That took a certain level of granddaughterly paranoia.
I’d be the one to bang on Granddad’s door someday, grow suspicious when he didn’t answer, force open a window, and find him dead—though if he was dead already, I wasn’t sure why this idea made me so anxious. It wasn’t like finding him dead an hour earlier was going to help.
I knocked harder. “Granddad!” I yelled. “It’s Harper.” It couldn’t be anyone else, since I was his only grandchild.
I sighed with relief when I finally heard footsteps approaching. Even his footfalls sounded misanthropic, soft and shuffling, like he’d rather wrestle snakes than let his granddaughter into his house.
He turned the lock and opened the door a crack—not even as wide as the chain would allow. At a quick glance, I couldn’t see any reason for his secrecy. He looked the same as always, with his salt-and-pepper hair pulled back in aponytail, and a streak of yellow paint drying in his beard. “I’m fine,” he said.
“Would you open the door?” I pleaded. “You didn’t let me in the house on Saturday, but at least you opened the door for me. You opened it only a crack on Sunday. This is a smaller crack. I can’t tell whether you’re less glad to see me or you’re trying to disguise the fact that you’re getting thinner.” He’d already started to close the door completely. Apparently he didn’t think I was as funny as I did. Quickly I asked, “May I borrow your car?”
“No.” The door shut.
“Granddad!” His footsteps didn’t retreat into the house, so I knew he was still listening. “Why not?” And why was I so determined to borrow his car? Why couldn’t I drive to the discount store to get contacts another day?
Because I was on a mission to be bikini clad and glasses free when I met Brody at the beach. And I was damned if this was the one day out of the year Granddad decided I couldn’t borrow his car.
“I don’t have to tell you why not,” he said through the door, which was the adult version of me changing the subject when Mom asked why I wanted contacts.
“You said when I turned sixteen that I could borrow your car whenever I wanted. That was your birthday gift to me.You wrote it on a scrap of paper and wrapped it up in a box.” If he didn’t remember that, we needed to have a talk about what he did remember, and what year it was, and whether he should be allowed to live
Inside the house was cool and dark with a faint scent of age and the sound of Mom’s angry language. As I shut the heavy door behind me, outside was bright and smelled like flowers. Tree frogs screamed in the trees. I skittered back to our little house and dug through Mom’s office files until I found my prescription, wondering how I’d ever thought I could spend the hot holiday at home.
* * *
The locally owned drugstores in the old-fashioned downtown around the corner from the B & B couldn’t help me today. To get my contact prescription filled on Labor Day, I needed the discount store with the optical shop out on the highway. And that meant I needed Granddad’s car.
I knocked on the door of his bungalow, just as I had yesterday and the day before, holding my breath until he answered. He drove to the grocery store once a week, and sometimes he swung by the art supply store to pick up more oil paints. As far as I knew, those were the only times he left the house where he’d lived forever and where Mom had grown up.
Granddad and Mom argued a lot. She told him shewanted to make sure he was happy and safe, and he said she was being a nosy busybody. He told her she needed to get rid of that no-good cheat of a husband once and for all, and she said he was being an overbearing jerk. They were both right. In the middle of these fights, I was the only one checking on him. Sawyer lived next door, and Granddad paid him to cut the grass, but I doubted he thought to conduct a welfare check when Granddad didn’t leave the house for days on end. That took a certain level of granddaughterly paranoia.
I’d be the one to bang on Granddad’s door someday, grow suspicious when he didn’t answer, force open a window, and find him dead—though if he was dead already, I wasn’t sure why this idea made me so anxious. It wasn’t like finding him dead an hour earlier was going to help.
I knocked harder. “Granddad!” I yelled. “It’s Harper.” It couldn’t be anyone else, since I was his only grandchild.
I sighed with relief when I finally heard footsteps approaching. Even his footfalls sounded misanthropic, soft and shuffling, like he’d rather wrestle snakes than let his granddaughter into his house.
He turned the lock and opened the door a crack—not even as wide as the chain would allow. At a quick glance, I couldn’t see any reason for his secrecy. He looked the same as always, with his salt-and-pepper hair pulled back in aponytail, and a streak of yellow paint drying in his beard. “I’m fine,” he said.
“Would you open the door?” I pleaded. “You didn’t let me in the house on Saturday, but at least you opened the door for me. You opened it only a crack on Sunday. This is a smaller crack. I can’t tell whether you’re less glad to see me or you’re trying to disguise the fact that you’re getting thinner.” He’d already started to close the door completely. Apparently he didn’t think I was as funny as I did. Quickly I asked, “May I borrow your car?”
“No.” The door shut.
“Granddad!” His footsteps didn’t retreat into the house, so I knew he was still listening. “Why not?” And why was I so determined to borrow his car? Why couldn’t I drive to the discount store to get contacts another day?
Because I was on a mission to be bikini clad and glasses free when I met Brody at the beach. And I was damned if this was the one day out of the year Granddad decided I couldn’t borrow his car.
“I don’t have to tell you why not,” he said through the door, which was the adult version of me changing the subject when Mom asked why I wanted contacts.
“You said when I turned sixteen that I could borrow your car whenever I wanted. That was your birthday gift to me.You wrote it on a scrap of paper and wrapped it up in a box.” If he didn’t remember that, we needed to have a talk about what he did remember, and what year it was, and whether he should be allowed to live
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