Read Online The Next Time You See Me by Holly Goddard Jones - Free Book Online

and betrayer, choosing herself just as Ronnie would have.
    “I’ll go get that photograph,” Susanna said finally. She couldn’t meet Pendleton’s gaze.
    “All right then.” He was almost kind. “I’ll be here till five.”
    She reached down for Abby, the both of them grunting as she pulled to a stand—Susanna with the effort, Abby at the indignity of Susanna’s hard fingers in her armpits—and they were most of the way to the car when Susanna realized that her daughter was still clutching Pendleton’s toy cruiser. “Keep it,” she muttered, fumbling one-handed in her purse for her keys.

Chapter Four
    1.
    Wyatt Powell’s morning routine had been more or less the same for thirty-two years, since the day when he took a promotion—he guessed you could call it that, though there hadn’t been an accompanying bump in pay—and moved from seconds at the factory to first shift:
    Awaken at five A.M . He’d needed an alarm the first several months, especially while he was still retraining his body for the new schedule, but never again since then; he couldn’t sleep past five A.M . now even if he wanted to, even if he went to bed after midnight.
    Coffee. Back then his mother had used an old aluminum kettle, brewing it stovetop, but now he owned a Mr. Coffee automatic drip with a digital clock and a timer: he needed only to scoop out his Folgers before bed and pour in a pot of water, and the coffee would be brewed and steaming at 5:10, which was always just enough time for Wyatt to rise, urinate, and let Boss out back for his own pee. Of course there’d been no Boss in those early days, but there’d always been some dog to tend to, though not always an inside dog. Wyatt hadn’t started sharing his house with an animal until it had become clear, sometime in his forties, that he was never going to find the right woman for the job.
    Breakfast. For himself and for the dog. Today, as on most Mondays, Wyatt opened a new package of sausage from the groceries he’d purchased yesterday, peeling back the plastic sleeve and slicing off three thick pieces smelling of cold fat and sage. These he plopped into his cast-iron skillet, which was still sitting out, wiped but unwashed, from yesterday’s use. As the sausages were cooking, the air redolent with smoke and the tang of red pepper, Wyatt spread margarine on two slices of white bread, popped them into the toaster, and poured his first cup of coffee. Here, too, his habit was many years fixed: one spoon of sugar and one spoon of powdered creamer, the sugar and creamer stored in little containers made of amber carnival glass, each with a divot between the lip and the lid where the stem of a spoon could extend. The set had been his mother’s. It had been on the kitchen table all through his growing up.
    He crumbled a sausage into Boss’s food bowl, stirred in a cup of Ol’ Roy kibble, and poured off the rendered fat from his cast-iron skillet. Boss, old enough now that he sometimes couldn’t even bring himself to eat standing up—he’d sit and lean into the bowl, only getting his hind legs into the motion when he needed to stretch for some last bits in the back—was already grinding away before Wyatt could seat himself. They were a couple of old boys, old bachelors, and Wyatt had examined his face in the bathroom mirror enough times to reach the conclusion that there was more than a little bloodhound in his own features these days: the rheumy, sagging eyes and loose jowls; his hair graying just as quickly as the fur on Boss’s muzzle was going to white. Boss paused, as he often did, and looked over his shoulder at Wyatt. “Go on, boy,” Wyatt said, tucking into his own breakfast, smearing blackberry jam on one of the pieces of toast and folding the other one around the first sausage. He sipped coffee between bites, wiped crumbs off the paunch of his stomach before they could grease-stain his undershirt. All of these acts were familiar and comforting.
    He dressed