Sunday at the Sunflower Inn by Jodi Thomas

Author:Jodi Thomas [Thomas, Jodi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zebra Books
Published: 2022-02-22T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 30

Melody in Shadows

“Michael? Michael? Are you up here?” Melody Avendale didn’t dare raise her voice. “Michael, please be here.” She clutched her plaid backpack against her chest as if it would protect her. “Please be here.”

The dusty boards on the third floor creaked as if angry that she’d woken them from a long sleep.

“Mike? It’s me. I made it to Honey Creek like you told me to if I was in trouble, but I can’t find you. Please say something. I’m scared. I called and gave you the signal. I know you’ll come get me. I went to the dock first, but you weren’t there. Then by luck a man saved me when I fell in the water. He brought me to just where I was heading. The Honey Creek Café. You were right—perfect hideout.”

Something rattled at the far end of a hallway, but she saw no movement. Four doors lined the hall like guards. All open. All dark, as if daring her to come in. At the end of the corridor was one high window. It provided a ray of sunshine that illuminated the dust dancing in the light like schools of tiny fish swimming in a sunbeam.

Melody kept moving silently. She’d lost her shoes in the river, but the lady at the café had given her socks. She progressed slowly, sliding along the floor as if ice skating.

“Michael, are you here? Oh, please be here. You told me where you used to hide and this is the last place I can remember to look.”

She made her way down the passageway, looking into every bare room. No one answered her whispered call.

When she reached the end, she crumbled below the window and began to cry. She’d been everywhere Mike had talked about. All the places he’d hidden when he’d run away from home as a boy. She’d stayed two hours at each place, waiting for him.

The garage where the school district housed their four buses was her first hideout. She’d found the coffeepot on the workbench in the back, just like Mike said it would be. Never washed, just rinsed out. Peanut butter crackers in a tin so the mice wouldn’t get to them.

A tiny farm on Sunflower Lane was her second stop. He’d said no one lived there anymore, but the house was stocked with canned goods. The lady who owned the cottage came there some mornings to plant a garden and some nights to cry.

Melody ate soup and peaches at the little house, then cleaned everything up. She liked that place. It had been a happy home once, she thought, but now it was sleeping away sorrow.

The next hideout she found was the fisherman’s shack used only in summer. Melody didn’t like that place. It smelled and had no food.

And now she was in the last place Michael had found when he was a kid. The third floor of a café. She’d tried to slip in earlier, but there’d been too many people around. Then, after she’d almost drowned, a man carried her right to the café.

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