Read Online The Vanishing Season by Jodi Lynn Anderson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jodi Lynn Anderson
Tags: Fiction
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a book on rocks that she’d gotten for her geology lessons instead. She loved the book, because it had shown her you could crack dull, ordinary rocks open and find colors inside. She considered retrieving a hammer from her dad’s toolbox in the basement and taking it outside in the moonlight to rock hunt.
Despite being tired, her body was wide-awake. She found herself thinking about Liam Witte, who was not her type. She thought about the habit he had of rubbing his lip with his thumb.
Jacie used to say that Maggie was waiting until everything lined up just so before she really decided to live her life. But nothing about life on the peninsula was just so. Maggie wondered if this was how the real part of life started, with everything going slightly tilted and making you feel like things were rising in you, the thought of Liam Witte’s thumb moving in your mind like ripples and waves.
7
GILL CREEK REACTED TO THE DANGER IN ITS MIDST WITH FEAR BUT ALSO a slight bit of pride. The county had never been at the center of things before. Father Stone at Maggie’s church—which her parents had started making her attend every Sunday afternoon after work—had more fire in his step and more passion at the pulpit. More people came to church, maybe because there was safety in numbers. Reporters rolled into town, and cops patrolled in the evenings—which came earlier as the days got colder—to scan the streets for suspicious individuals. Maggie’s dad installed a home alarm, even though she reminded him that it wasn’t like the guy was sneaking into people’s houses and taking them out of their beds.
The tourists were completely gone by now, and in downtown Gill Creek, the seasonal restaurants and shops—the kite store, the Scandinavian dessert shop where the waitresses dressed up as milkmaids—had shut their doors, their windows dark and gloomy as Maggie passed them on her way to work. But the quiet also gave the town a certain warmth—in the year-round cafés, people gathered for eggs and fifty-cent coffee and huddled against the world outside, and others caught up on the mostly empty Main Street and talked in low voices about their theories on the killer.
At the Emporium business slowed, but no one seemed to mind. Elsa hadn’t gone into the antiques business, Maggie realized, to make money but to socialize, catch up with the people who came and went, and have something to do. She could have retired, she revealed one day, because she’d inherited some money that made her retirement comfortable. Maggie, it seemed, was the only one who desperately needed the job. And luckily Elsa kept the Emporium open rain or shine.
One weekend after the next, Maggie rang up one dusty thing and then another and another: a chamber pot, a Victorian hairbrush set, a yellowed copy of Huck Finn : proof—she figured—that Gill Creek’s long-dead residents had once pooped, combed their hair, and read books just like people today. She watched for Gerald, who came in only sporadically, and who Elsa said had denied everything, pointing out that he sold at least one gramophone every two weeks and that anyone could have bought one and left it on Maggie’s porch. Maggie knew he must keep a detailed inventory beyond the store’s price ledger, and she still planned to confront him herself, but she was waiting for a moment that felt right.
Meanwhile she got Elsa’s life story and all the local gossip: She learned all of Elsa’s sister’s annoying habits, she learned that the woman who lived in the white house at the end of Banks Street was a hoarder, that Ed who owned the fish boil was cheating on his wife, and that fishing in the northern tip of the lake was bad this year and everyone was drinking more than usual. She also heard, once or twice, about Liam and Pauline. She heard Pauline liked to sunbathe naked and that Liam and his dad sometimes sacrificed animals. Elsa talked about all of them the way she talked about celebrities. Maggie
Despite being tired, her body was wide-awake. She found herself thinking about Liam Witte, who was not her type. She thought about the habit he had of rubbing his lip with his thumb.
Jacie used to say that Maggie was waiting until everything lined up just so before she really decided to live her life. But nothing about life on the peninsula was just so. Maggie wondered if this was how the real part of life started, with everything going slightly tilted and making you feel like things were rising in you, the thought of Liam Witte’s thumb moving in your mind like ripples and waves.
7
GILL CREEK REACTED TO THE DANGER IN ITS MIDST WITH FEAR BUT ALSO a slight bit of pride. The county had never been at the center of things before. Father Stone at Maggie’s church—which her parents had started making her attend every Sunday afternoon after work—had more fire in his step and more passion at the pulpit. More people came to church, maybe because there was safety in numbers. Reporters rolled into town, and cops patrolled in the evenings—which came earlier as the days got colder—to scan the streets for suspicious individuals. Maggie’s dad installed a home alarm, even though she reminded him that it wasn’t like the guy was sneaking into people’s houses and taking them out of their beds.
The tourists were completely gone by now, and in downtown Gill Creek, the seasonal restaurants and shops—the kite store, the Scandinavian dessert shop where the waitresses dressed up as milkmaids—had shut their doors, their windows dark and gloomy as Maggie passed them on her way to work. But the quiet also gave the town a certain warmth—in the year-round cafés, people gathered for eggs and fifty-cent coffee and huddled against the world outside, and others caught up on the mostly empty Main Street and talked in low voices about their theories on the killer.
At the Emporium business slowed, but no one seemed to mind. Elsa hadn’t gone into the antiques business, Maggie realized, to make money but to socialize, catch up with the people who came and went, and have something to do. She could have retired, she revealed one day, because she’d inherited some money that made her retirement comfortable. Maggie, it seemed, was the only one who desperately needed the job. And luckily Elsa kept the Emporium open rain or shine.
One weekend after the next, Maggie rang up one dusty thing and then another and another: a chamber pot, a Victorian hairbrush set, a yellowed copy of Huck Finn : proof—she figured—that Gill Creek’s long-dead residents had once pooped, combed their hair, and read books just like people today. She watched for Gerald, who came in only sporadically, and who Elsa said had denied everything, pointing out that he sold at least one gramophone every two weeks and that anyone could have bought one and left it on Maggie’s porch. Maggie knew he must keep a detailed inventory beyond the store’s price ledger, and she still planned to confront him herself, but she was waiting for a moment that felt right.
Meanwhile she got Elsa’s life story and all the local gossip: She learned all of Elsa’s sister’s annoying habits, she learned that the woman who lived in the white house at the end of Banks Street was a hoarder, that Ed who owned the fish boil was cheating on his wife, and that fishing in the northern tip of the lake was bad this year and everyone was drinking more than usual. She also heard, once or twice, about Liam and Pauline. She heard Pauline liked to sunbathe naked and that Liam and his dad sometimes sacrificed animals. Elsa talked about all of them the way she talked about celebrities. Maggie
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