Stones and Spark by Sibella Giorello

Author:Sibella Giorello [Giorello, Sibella]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mysteries & Thrillers
ISBN: 9781621251613
Publisher: Cool Gus Publishing
Published: 2014-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

My one hope—my last hope on this awful day—is to reach the back stairs without being seen so I can run to my bedroom and check my email, find some message from Drew.

But the kitchen tonight smells of beef and salt and my mother's frantic attempts to pretend she's normal.

"Your jeans are dirty," she says the second I step through the back door.

I look down. I've left my All Stars outside, as a precaution, but now I see the quarry dirt is smeared into my jeans, where I kneeled down to take soil samples, photographs. The image of Drew's purple Converse flashes through my mind.

When I look up, my dad is wearing that expression which says Blessed Are The Peacemakers.

"Hiking," I say.

"Hiking?" she repeats. "You went hiking?"

It doesn't matter how much heat is radiating from the oven, or how much our old windows are sweating from her domestic efforts--the whole room freezes. Nobody breathes, each of us waiting for the very next words that will determine whether this night goes up or down, light or dark, forward or back.

"DeMott."

That's all I come up with.

Her eyes are moving quickly, her mind adding everything up and two plus two will never equal four.

And my own mind is scrambling, ransacking for one full sentence that isn't also a lie. "DeMott," I repeat. "He wanted to show me around Weyanoke."

It's true: he wanted to; I just didn’t go.

In the next frozen silence, I walk across the room and set my pack down on the bottom of the back stairs. I am too tired, too distressed, too defeated to make another attempt at explaining what can't be explained. I want to run upstairs, slam my bedroom door, and lock it forever. I saw the look on my dad's face. No way can I talk to him tonight about Drew. He's got his hands full.

Without replying, my mom turns and opens the oven door. My stomach growls but my head overrides it, wondering what she's cooking.

"DeMott seems like a good guy," my dad says.

I don't say anything.

"Do you like him?" he asks.

She answers for me: "He's going to marry Raleigh."

I look at my dad, horrified. He laughs.

"Does Raleigh have any say in this?" he asks.

"Yes." She pulls the casserole dish from the oven. "God told me she's going to say yes."

I feel sick. My dad laughs again, so relieved that she's taken this new track with the conversation. But she doesn't get that. She looks over at him, confusion clouding her face. Somehow it hits her that she's apparently made a joke. She laughs, tentatively. But it's enough to get them chattering. I push a smile on my face and take my place at the table. That familiar lump camps in my throat. It won't help me choke down whatever is under the muddy-brown casserole sauce.

She serves us. We pray. My dad takes a bite, tells her it's delicious. She tells us—happily—that it's meatless meatloaf.

My first bite tastes like somebody made a brick out of oatmeal then coated it with burnt ketchup.

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