Read Online Still Waters by Emma Carlson Berne - Free Book Online Page A

Hannah splashed a handful on her face and looked around for a towel. A threadbare blue one hung on a hook near the sink. She pulled it off and wrinkled her nose at the musty smell. She dried her face on the hem of her shirt.
    The medicine cabinet over the sink was a big metal box with a single small mirror set into the front. On impulse, Hannahswung it open and gazed at the bottle of generic aspirin and the packet of straight razors that sat alone on the metal shelves.
    She came out of the bathroom and glanced toward the living room. Colin was no longer visible at the window. Quietly, Hannah opened the door next to the bathroom. She looked in on a simple bedroom, a large wooden bedstead neatly made up with a plain white spread. A pair of reading glasses perched on a nightstand, where more books were piled. The one tiny window above the bed showed the tops of pine trees clustered closely to the house.
    Hannah swung the door closed and opened the one across the hall. It was a child’s room—twin beds stood against each wall and a battered rug on the floor patterned with airplanes lay askew. In the corner by a window was a desk cluttered with pinecones, stones, and glass jars of twigs and dead grass.
    Hannah turned away. She felt vaguely dirty. Resisting the impulse to glance over her shoulder, she hurried back down the hallway and through to the living room. The flood of light from the big window seemed very friendly and welcome all of a sudden.
    She looked around. Colin was gone. “Colin?” she called. Her voice sounded oddly muffled and flat, bouncing off the walls of the room. Then she saw that a screen door on the other side of the room was open, flapping loose in the wind.
    She went over to a short flight of spindly wooden stairs that led down to the little rocky beach. Hannah could see Colin standing off to the side, staring at something obscured by a big tangle of bushes.
    She clopped down the stairs, which were sprinkled with sand. The lake spread out in front of her. Mist hung a few feet above the dark, glassy water, shrouding it heavily so that she could not see the opposite shore. The little beach was a jumble of sand and gray rocks. The water filtered through reeds poking up from the bottom before it lapped at the shore.
    Hannah picked her way through the rocks, trying not to turn her ankle. She could see Colin’s head and shoulders above the bushes. Panting a little, Hannah reached his side. “Hey,” she said. She followed his eyes.
    A moldy rowboat was pulled up on the shore. Hannah remembered seeing it in the photo. It looked as old as the house—the paint had long worn away from the soft-looking boards. A couple of planks laid across the middle served as seats, and a pair of oars were slung on the bottom.
    Colin was holding his camera. As Hannah watched, he raised the camera to his face and pressed the shutter several times. He moved around to the other side and took a few shots there too. “Great shape,” he said.
    She squinted at the boat. “Yeah, it’s okay.”
    He leaned over the edge and snapped a shot of the oars. Hannah put a hand on his back and he straightened up. “Let’s go inside,” he said, draping an arm around her shoulders. They headed back toward the house. “I’m starving.”
    Hannah looked back at the boat as they climbed the stairs to the house. A single piece of ragged rope trailed from the bow, the hemp prickly and dark with age. She shivered without knowing why.

CHAPTER 8
     
    The back door slapped flatly behind them as Hannah followed Colin back into the house. “I’ll grab the bags from the car,” he said over his shoulder, his step brisk and confident again. Hannah imagined his figure disturbing the thick, still air of the house, like a rippling eddy in a sluggish stream.
    “Okay.”
    His footsteps descended the porch stairs. Hannah stood still in the center of the floor, feeling a thin layer of grit in the bottom of her sneakers, the frayed laces pressing on her