Her Silent Bones by Pamela Fagan Hutchins

Author:Pamela Fagan Hutchins [Hutchins, Pamela Fagan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-01-16T00:00:00+00:00

THIRTY-ONE

Delaney was dreaming. It wasn’t a good dream. In it, she was a child again. Her mother had slipped into her bedroom and woken her, big tears in her cat-green eyes. The moonlight streaming through the window caught them as well as something pretty and gold dangling from her hand.

A memory as much as a dream.

“My mother gave it to me when I was a girl. I was going to wait until you were thirteen to give it to you, but I’ve decided you should have it now.” Mama smiled through her tears.

Laney touched the chain with a fingertip. She loved seeing it on her mother’s ankle, but that wasn’t often. Her mother was away more than she was home. And when she was home, she and Daddy mostly screamed at each other. Laney heard the things her grandmother said to her grandfather, too. Something’s wrong with that woman, when she was being nice. Bad wife and mother, most of the time. Godless tramp, when she was angry. To Laney, her grandmother was wrong. Her mother was a beautiful will-o’-the-wisp. A northern light.

She’d rather have her mother than a piece of jewelry.

“Give me your ankle,” her mother said.

Laney slipped it out from under the covers. Her mother clasped the chain.

“There. What do you think?”

Laney swallowed, and it felt like one of Grandma’s dry, tasteless oatmeal cookies had lodged in her throat. Her voice came out a croak. “But what if I lose it, Mama?”

Her dad had walked in, smiling at her, ignoring her mother. “Just as long as you don’t lose that medallion I gave you, kiddo.”

“I won’t, Daddy.”

An explosion of barking jerked her out of the dream and awake into the cool of the old house at night. She licked her lips, opened her eyes. The moonlight of her dreams was blocked by closed curtains, leaving her in pitch darkness. Dudley. Then she bolted upright. Dudley was a professional sleeper. Nothing woke him. Kateena! Her breath caught in her chest.

Footsteps in the hall. No. In the doorway to her room.

Instinct took over. She rolled away from the door, flowing onto the floor soundlessly like a ripple across water. Away from the gun safe with her Staccato locked behind a four-digit keypad. Shit. I need a weapon. Her bear spray in the bedside table. She reached up and pulled out the drawer, felt inside, thankful for the silent runners and short height of the piece of furniture. But she didn’t find it. She groped and walked her fingers. Still no bear spray, and she was going to make noise if she kept it up. Dammit. She slid her arm under the bed, sweeping, feeling. Her fingers bumped something solid. She grasped it. Cylindrical. Metal. Long.

A baseball bat. Thank you, Liam.

Weight pressed into the mattress above her. Dudley’s barks moved to the entrance to the room. He was loud but unwilling to come any nearer the intruder. The mattress rose and fell as the person on it crawled around, searching.

The intruder was going to lose interest in an empty bedroom.

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