Read Online Zero at the Bone by Michael Cadnum - Free Book Online

and curt, but his dad was like someone who would blow your head off. Plus, he had just had a pig valve put into his heart.
    Mom tilted her head, meaning that she was listening but not about to talk. Dad was addressing her when he added, “Kyle says he doesn’t know anything.”
    â€œI don’t believe it,” I said, and Mom gave a slow nod, her eyes closed.
    I said, “Kyle knows.”
    â€œHe was very sleepy,” Dad said, as though that proved something.
    â€œKyle knows Anita wasn’t telling us everything,” I said. “All this time, shaving a few hours off work to—” To do what young women did with men. I was the one who would shout at Anita when she came home. “He knows who she’s been going out with.”
    â€œCalm down,” said my dad.
    â€œI’m going to go get Kyle and drag him over here,” I said. “I want him to sit right here in this kitchen and look me in the eye and tell me he doesn’t know where Anita is.”
    â€œRelax, Cray,” said my dad from somewhere behind me.
    But I was rushing through the living room, hooking the keys to the Jeep off the plate on the side table with one hand, feeling my eagerness to have somewhere to go, something to do.
    I could picture Kyle telling me he didn’t know anything about Anita, his eyes looking everywhere but right into mine.
    The sky was light blue to the east. A bird fluttered in the bottlebrush plant, chirping.
    All night, I thought.
    She’s been up all night, gone, away. And she never called.

11
    I flooded the engine.
    I turned the ignition, pumped the gas, and the Jeep gave its hearty rumble, and then gasped. It choked and fell silent, rolling down the driveway a little by its own weight until I yanked on the parking brake.
    Dad climbed into the silent Jeep and sat next to me. I could sense him trying to think of the right thing to say, looking away from me like a passenger enjoying the view—a front porch and an ornamental plum tree. The front garden had been planned by a man with an M.A. in gardening. He had started a company, Green Planet, and we were one of his first customers. No one else had stepping-stones leading up to their garden faucet, the step beside the dripping faucet green with moss.
    â€œWhy don’t we have any normal cars?” I asked.
    He rubbed his hands together like someone who was cold. It was gray but warm, low morning clouds overhead.
    â€œYou don’t have time to do all the work,” I said. I meant that I personally didn’t know enough about cars to replace engine parts, clutch plates, whatever it was that had to be done. I couldn’t help him—he would have to do all the under-the-hood labor himself. And I meant, what was going to happen today, a shipment of nightstands due out or we would never make the deadline.
    â€œThe Jeep is great off-road,” he said.
    We shifted into four-wheel drive about once a year, in the Sierra, near our cabin at Lake Tahoe. The Jeep could drive up and down cliffs, especially in reverse. But it was clear to me that my father liked his cars for reasons that had only a little to do with how they performed.
    â€œMom is picking out a picture of Anita,” I said.
    â€œJust in case they need one,” he said.
    I stared up the street, willing myself to see her. I closed my eyes. Count to three, I told myself, and open them—she’ll be here.
    We got out of the Jeep and went inside.
    We sat in the kitchen, taking turns calling emergency rooms, starting with Kaiser Hospital and Summit, and working down the list. I was surprised how many hospitals there were. They all recognized my sister’s description from my father’s earlier call—long blond hair, gray-blue eyes.
    Some of them were convalescent hospitals, nursing homes. I didn’t call them. But I called every surgery center and twenty-four-hour clinic in Alameda County. She began to sound like a character in a