Read Online The Carson Springs Trilogy: Stranger in Paradise, Taste of Honey, and Wish Come True by Eileen Goudge - Free Book Online Page B

and now looked about the strange room to get her bearings. In the light spilling in from the hallway she saw a dresser and overstuffed chair, and what looked like a quilt hanging on the wall. On the dresser was a jar that glittered as if with treasure; it was filled with buttons, she saw. She looked back at the woman.
    “I must’ve been dreaming,” she said groggily.
    “Sounded more like a nightmare.” The woman smiled. She’d changed into jeans and a chambray shirt, yet looked prettier somehow than at the wedding. Her brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and her cheeks were flushed as if from the outdoors. “Do you want to tell me about it?”
    “I don’t remember.” Someone had thought to cover her with a blanket, and now she pulled it up over her shoulders, holding it around her like a cape. She couldn’t seem to stop shivering.
    “I sometimes talk in my sleep,” Laura confided, speaking as cozily as if she’d known her all her life. “That’s what my husband used to say. Of course, I never had any idea until he told me.”
    “You’re married?” Finch ventured.
    “Divorced.”
    “Oh.” To the girl this was normal. She knew hardly anyone whose parents were still together.
    “Almost two years,” Laura said.
    Finch said the first thing that came to mind. “You don’t seem old enough.”
    Laura laughed. “He was my high school sweetheart. We got married right out of college.” She lifted a corner of the blanket, which was dragging on the floor, smoothing it over the bed. “Funny. I couldn’t have imagined life without him, but I didn’t curl up and die the way I thought I would.”
    The girl didn’t know what to say. She was suspicious of all this niceness. At the same time she felt a strange yearning to trust this woman. She settled for a noncommittal shrug. “You didn’t have a choice,” she said.
    “There’s an old saying: God never gives us more than we can handle.” Laura drifted into thought, the light from the hallway illuminating her square face that ought to have been plain but was somehow pretty. After a moment she roused herself and said brightly, “I’m not being a very good hostess, am I? What can I get you—a glass of water, something to eat?”
    “Water would be nice.” She’d never been so thirsty. At the same time, she felt strangely full…though she had no memory of having eaten. The events of the past few days had run together like colors on a finger painting.
    Laura got up and left the room, returning moments later with a chilled glass in which ice cubes tinkled with a faint, musical sound. The girl gulped it down so quickly its coldness made her head ache.
    Laura touched her shoulder. “You’re shivering. Let’s get you under the covers.” She bent to pick up the backpack on the floor beside the bed.
    “Don’t touch that!” Finch cried.
    The woman froze, clearly startled. “I didn’t want you to trip over it,” she said gently.
    The girl’s face flooded with heat. “Sorry,” she muttered. “I just don’t like people touching my things.”
    Laura straightened, planting her hands on her hips. “Look, you’ve got to trust somebody, so it might as well be me. I meant what I said. No snooping, and that goes for personal property, too. Scout’s honor.” Her voice was crisp, but not unkind.
    Finch dropped her gaze, at a sudden loss for words. She didn’t know how she was supposed to feel. Almost everyone she’d ever trusted had disappointed her in some way. Why should this woman be any different?
    “Where’s the bathroom?” she asked, realizing suddenly that she had to pee.
    “Just down the hall.” Laura pointed the way. “I left you a towel if you feel like taking a shower. Anything else you need just make yourself at home.”
    And that was it. Her first night in this strange place—walking as if in a dream down a hall lined with family pictures, its old boards creaking faintly beneath her bare feet. The woman eyed her from the bedroom