Read Online The Summer We Got Free by Mia McKenzie - Free Book Online

nodded.
“Well, juvie .”
    “Why? What for?”
    He sighed a long
sigh and shook his head. “Baby, I aint ready to tell you all that yet.” He knew
she would not press him, though some little part of him wanted her to. He
rubbed his eyes with his fists, like a child.
    “You need to rest,”
she said.
    He nodded, lay
back on the bed, and was asleep.

 
    When Ava got to the back screen door, she saw Helena
alone out on the back porch, sitting on the top step, smoking, her head leaned
back against the wooden porch railing, staring out at the overgrown yard. Paul
was wrong. She hadn’t been avoiding his sister. She had been trying to think of
a way to talk to her, to broach the subject of what had happened at the door
that morning. Now she stepped out onto the porch. “Where’s Sarah?” she asked
Helena.
    “Your mother needed something, so she went inside to
help her,” Helena said. “Where’s Paul?”
    “’Sleep.”
    “Oh,” she said.
“Good. I thought he was going to pass out on the steps here a little while ago.
Does he work nights a lot?”
    “A lot lately.
He wants us to get our own house,” Ava said.
    “ He wants?” she asked. “You don’t want
that?”
    Ava shook her
head.
    Helena took a
drag off her cigarette. Smoke filled the air between them and then blew away on
a warm breeze.
    “I’m sorry about
what happened this morning,” Ava said. “At the door. I haven’t really been
feeling like myself today.”
    Helena grinned.
“ Who have you been feeling like? Someone who kisses
strangers who show up at their door?” She shrugged. “Well, stranger things have
happened.”
    “Stranger things
have happened to you than showing up on the doorstep of the brother you haven’t
seen in twenty years and being kissed on the mouth by a woman you’ve never seen
before who turns out to be his wife? Baltimore must be a lot more interesting
than it sounds.”
    Helena laughed, but Ava didn’t really see the humor in
any of it. Helena seemed to realize that and said, “I’m sorry, Ava. I’m not
making fun of you. You’ve just looked very serious and concerned since it
happened and I’m trying to lighten the mood a little. It was odd. But I’m sure
there’s a simple reason for it.”
    Ava had not
considered there was a simple reason. Thinking about it now, she could not come
up with one, either. “Like what?”
    “Maybe you saw
Paul in me and were drawn to that. And you…reached out…in a way that seemed
strange afterwards, but was just a natural impulse at the time. An embracing of
the qualities of my brother that are in me.”
    Ava did not
think that answer was at all simple. Or at all true, for that matter. She was
sure she had not seen Paul. Paul had never inspired that kind of behavior in
her. She thought about saying that, but changed her mind. She wanted to know,
wanted to really understand, what had happened, and why, but she did not want
to push. Especially since Helena seemed so unconcerned about it. They may as
well have been talking about the weather, with the way she sat there, smoking
her cigarette and casually flicking the cinders into the ashtray at her feet.
    “Anyway, it was
just one moment, and it passed, so you don’t need to feel embarrassed about it,
or nervous.”
    But then Ava saw something. Still with that amused
look on her face, Helena leaned down to tap her cigarette ash into the ashtray.
And her hand shook. No, not shook. Trembled .
She looked up at Ava and for a moment her façade of unconcern failed and Ava saw
a flash of worry in her eyes.
    “Now, speaking
of my brother,” Helena said, “why don’t you come sit down here and talk to me
about him.” She patted the weather-worn step beside
her. “Would you?”
    Ava did not want
to talk about Paul. Still, she came and sat down on the step.
    Helena picked up
the pack of cigarettes that was by her feet and offered her one.
    Ava shook her
head. “I don’t smoke.”
    She looked
surprised. “Paul smokes like a