Read Online The Final Victim by Wendy Corsi Staub - Free Book Online
Authors: Wendy Corsi Staub
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Mom followed him soon after, giving in to the cancer that had been recently diagnosed, and which she was prepared to battle valiantly as long as she had some thing to live for.
Without her husband, Connie June Remington apparently had nothing left to live for. He was her whole world. Raised on the island a stone's throw from Oakgate Charlotte's mother was a spoiled, pampered only child. Her parents were middle-aged when she came along, and) had thought they were infertile. Their daughter was the center of their world for the rest of their lives. The indulgent, laid-back Norris took over where they left off coddling his wife until the day he died.
Nothing could fill the emptiness in the orphaned and widowed Connie June's life. Not even a daughter, no matter how Charlotte tried.
Not that she tried all that hard.
Her mother was never the doting parent Daddy was. Norris Remington showered his only child with both affection and material goods.
Now they're all gone, Charlotte thinks bleakly. Not just her father and her mother and Uncle Xavy , but her grandfather, too.
Yet none of those losses has had the shattering impact of another loss, the one that weighs most heavily on her heart.
The one she almost didn't survive at all.
You're supposed to bury your parents and grandparents.
Not your children.
* * *
Lianna discovered the cobweb- and dust-shrouded hidden stairway entirely by accident one night not long after moving into her temporary quarters at Oakgate .
Even with a flashlight and cell phone reassuringly in hand it took all her nerve that first night to descend the old wooden staircase into the depths of the house. When she realized where it led-to the basement, with its own exit to the outside world-she immediately recognized its potential.
Freedom .
Lianna had been feeling stifled by her overprotective mother long before they settled in at Oakgate . At least in Savannah, there was some reprieve from her mother's watchful eye. She could hang out occasionally at friends' houses, the squares, the mall…
But these days, her visits to Savannah require the orchestration of an overseas military invasion.
Basically, now that she's stuck out here in the marshes, there is no readily accessible escape.
At least, there wasn't. Not until she found the hidden passageway… and Kevin Tinkston .
Even he has no idea exactly how she gets out of the house for their forbidden rendezvous. She isn't about to jeopardize their relationship by admitting that the only way she can see him is to creep through an old tunnel in the night like a convict making a jailbreak. At eighteen he's five years older than her, but she told him she's almost seventeen and he apparently believes her, or doesn't care how old she is.
If her mother ever knew she was riding off into the night in a car with an older boy-a man, really-she would freak.
Look at how she went berserk just last week when she found out that Lianna hadn't spent the afternoon at the library with her friend Casey and her mother, but at the mall with her friend Devin and her stepfather. They were supposed to go to the library first, but it was closed, and Casey was supposed to be there too but she blew them off.
"You lied to me!" Mom screeched at Lianna , who denied it vehemently.
She didn't lie. She just deliberately failed to mention that Devin, whom her mother thought was a bad influence, was involved in the plans. Or that Devin's mother was staying out at their house on Tybee and Devin's stepfather, Ray, a long-haired, reportedly womanizing musician of whom Mom naturally didn't approve, would be chaperoning.
Lianna pushes away a renewed pang of guilt, reminding herself that she had no choice but to withhold the details that day. And that it isn't her fault that her mother is
Mom followed him soon after, giving in to the cancer that had been recently diagnosed, and which she was prepared to battle valiantly as long as she had some thing to live for.
Without her husband, Connie June Remington apparently had nothing left to live for. He was her whole world. Raised on the island a stone's throw from Oakgate Charlotte's mother was a spoiled, pampered only child. Her parents were middle-aged when she came along, and) had thought they were infertile. Their daughter was the center of their world for the rest of their lives. The indulgent, laid-back Norris took over where they left off coddling his wife until the day he died.
Nothing could fill the emptiness in the orphaned and widowed Connie June's life. Not even a daughter, no matter how Charlotte tried.
Not that she tried all that hard.
Her mother was never the doting parent Daddy was. Norris Remington showered his only child with both affection and material goods.
Now they're all gone, Charlotte thinks bleakly. Not just her father and her mother and Uncle Xavy , but her grandfather, too.
Yet none of those losses has had the shattering impact of another loss, the one that weighs most heavily on her heart.
The one she almost didn't survive at all.
You're supposed to bury your parents and grandparents.
Not your children.
* * *
Lianna discovered the cobweb- and dust-shrouded hidden stairway entirely by accident one night not long after moving into her temporary quarters at Oakgate .
Even with a flashlight and cell phone reassuringly in hand it took all her nerve that first night to descend the old wooden staircase into the depths of the house. When she realized where it led-to the basement, with its own exit to the outside world-she immediately recognized its potential.
Freedom .
Lianna had been feeling stifled by her overprotective mother long before they settled in at Oakgate . At least in Savannah, there was some reprieve from her mother's watchful eye. She could hang out occasionally at friends' houses, the squares, the mall…
But these days, her visits to Savannah require the orchestration of an overseas military invasion.
Basically, now that she's stuck out here in the marshes, there is no readily accessible escape.
At least, there wasn't. Not until she found the hidden passageway… and Kevin Tinkston .
Even he has no idea exactly how she gets out of the house for their forbidden rendezvous. She isn't about to jeopardize their relationship by admitting that the only way she can see him is to creep through an old tunnel in the night like a convict making a jailbreak. At eighteen he's five years older than her, but she told him she's almost seventeen and he apparently believes her, or doesn't care how old she is.
If her mother ever knew she was riding off into the night in a car with an older boy-a man, really-she would freak.
Look at how she went berserk just last week when she found out that Lianna hadn't spent the afternoon at the library with her friend Casey and her mother, but at the mall with her friend Devin and her stepfather. They were supposed to go to the library first, but it was closed, and Casey was supposed to be there too but she blew them off.
"You lied to me!" Mom screeched at Lianna , who denied it vehemently.
She didn't lie. She just deliberately failed to mention that Devin, whom her mother thought was a bad influence, was involved in the plans. Or that Devin's mother was staying out at their house on Tybee and Devin's stepfather, Ray, a long-haired, reportedly womanizing musician of whom Mom naturally didn't approve, would be chaperoning.
Lianna pushes away a renewed pang of guilt, reminding herself that she had no choice but to withhold the details that day. And that it isn't her fault that her mother is
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