Midnight at the Electric by Jodi Lynn Anderson

Author:Jodi Lynn Anderson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-04-11T16:00:00+00:00

ADRI

PART 2

CHAPTER 4

The bright-orange lid of the sun was just rising over the flat horizon. Bleary eyed, Adri flipped back over the pages of the journal and thumbed through Lenore’s letters. There had to be an ending somewhere she’d missed. The journal cut off so suddenly. And Lenore’s letters were incomplete. Where were the letters that had upset Catherine so much? What had they said?

“You’ve got to be kidding,” she whispered.

She stood, her back aching from sitting for so long. She went and washed her face in the bathroom and then came back, angry and restless. If she’d known she wouldn’t be able to finish, she wouldn’t have started reading in the first place. It was like spending hours on one of those old jigsaw puzzles with the lighthouses or the majestic herd of horses and then finding out the last pieces were missing. Had Lenore made it to Beth? Had Beezie survived? How had the Ortizes ended up with the farm, when they weren’t in the picture at all? Even Galapagos had failed to make an appearance.

Adri rummaged in her nightstand for the postcard she’d found that first night in Canaan, and reread it. After a few moments of going back and forth she realized something wasn’t right there either. The postcard was dated May 7, 1920, almost a year after Lenore’s last letter. How could Lenore have come to America for the first time twice?

She sank back down into the piles of paper on the bed, burrowing into her pillow, wishing she hadn’t stayed up all night for something so pointless. She remembered one of the major reasons she’d always loved her regimen: her runs, her studying, her exhaustive schedule. This is what happens when you have too much time on your hands. You waste your energy on things that don’t matter.

A sudden sound downstairs jolted her eyes open. A loud, raucous laugh. Had she imagined it?

She followed the smell of coffee to the kitchen where, lounged around the table, were Lily and four other women. They were huddled over handfuls of playing cards, and they looked up as she entered.

“Well if it isn’t Rumplestiltskin,” a woman said. She and Lily were drinking coffee at the table.

“It’s the celebrity,” one woman said drolly. And then, standing, “Would you like a beergarita?”

“It’s eight in the morning,” Adri said, after a moment’s confusion.

“Exactly,” the woman said, pouring her a glass. “I’m Carol.” She and the other women were much younger than Lily—maybe in their seventies. They were all dressed in bright colors, and one wore an orange cloth visor.

“We tried not to wake you,” Lily said more kindly.

“I’m the dealer,” the woman in the visor said. “Abigail.”

“Where’d you all come from?”

“Didn’t you know I had friends, honey?” Lily teased. Apparently, Lily wasn’t as lonely as she’d thought. Adri felt a stab of jealousy, but she wasn’t sure of what—of Lily having four more friends than she did, or of the friends having Lily.

“You said all the people you knew were dead,” Adri said, knowing she sounded ridiculous.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.