Read Online The Barefoot Believers by Annie Jones - Free Book Online Page B

of broken expectations. Tears deluged her vision, and probably clouded her judgment as well, as she reached for her sister’s hand and gave it a squeeze.
    Jo didn’t quite recoil but she did flinch slightly at Kate’s unexpected touch. “Are you okay, Kate?”
    She nodded, sniffled and seized the brass head of her cane with both hands. “Probably just a side effect of my pain medication.”
    â€œSo, you going to explain to me how this place used to be closer to the beach thirty years ago or will that cause a total meltdown?” Jo had already turned her attention in the direction of the beautiful beach that lay somewhere out there, beyond her ability to see it, bordering the Gulf of Mexico.
    â€œBack then, before the area got so developed, before they built the bypass and widened the highway, come nightfall we could sit in the backyard and hear the waves crashing on the beach. It was the lullaby that sang us to sleep at night and the thrilling charge that woke us in the morning.”
    She paused and listened.
    No waves. No lullaby.
    â€œIt became a part of the way we thought of this place,” she went on. “It set the rhythm of our days and became inextricably intertwined with our memories.”
    Kate took a deep breath but only smelled car exhaust, dust in the air and the slight hint of bleach. “So much so that being gone all these years we just sort of merged the ideal and the real. In my mind, when we first came to this place, it was on the ocean, and even though I can see that’s not true, it still rings true for me today.”
    Jo crinkled her nose first at Kate then at the house. “Are you a podiatrist or a poet?”
    â€œCan’t I be both?” Kate raised her head. The sound of highway traffic greeted her, the buzz of cars and trucks trundling over the roads that had only been narrow streets years earlier. “At least Dream Away Bay Court is still isolated and undeveloped.”
    â€œYou say that like it’s a good thing.” Jo squinted at the bumpy lane they had come down to reach the cul-de-sac with only two houses in it.
    â€œIf someone wants privacy. If they want a retreat from the world to be alone with his or her thoughts. If you want to make a spot that’s yours alone. This is just the place.” Kate tried to make it sound appealing even though Jo had to know that Kate, herself, found the very notion appalling.
    â€œPrivacy, sure. Except for having windows of the only other house around staring directly into yours.” Jo turned to face the smaller cottage.
    Designed in the same style as theirs, it only had one story. Though, as a child, Kate had attributed the old place with plenty of stories of her own making. “Ahh, the mystery house.”
    â€œThe what? ” Jo, who had popped up the tailgate of her Cruiser and had begun unloading suitcases, swung her head around so fast that even the hem of her blue-and-white sundress flounced in response. “This is the first I’m hearing of that. What mystery? Do not tell me something awful or untoward went on in that house and you never told me about it.”
    Kate smiled slyly, enjoying the ability to reclaim the right of the big sister to spin tales and enchant her younger sister, who had long ago become disenchanted with everything from men to these kinds of whimsical memories.
    Jo went up on tiptoe, or as on tiptoe as she could in her stylish but ridiculously impractical shoes. She twisted her head over her shoulder to whisper. “It looks deserted.”
    â€œIt always looked deserted.” Kate made her way over to Jo, her head ducked down as though creeping along, trying to stay low and out of sight. Even though she stuck out like a sore…foot with her clunking cane and clumsy cast. Still, she grinned and whispered in her best late-night, under-the-covers, scary-story voice, “That’s why I called it the mystery house.”
    â€œNobody