Wicked Stepmother by Michael McDowell & Dennis Schuetz & Axel Young

Author:Michael McDowell & Dennis Schuetz & Axel Young [McDowell, Michael & Schuetz, Dennis & Young, Axel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Horror, Mystery
ISBN: 9781943910342
Google: eUe5jwEACAAJ
Amazon: 1943910340
Goodreads: 29489952
Publisher: Valancourt Books
Published: 1983-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

14

The Hawke summer house in Truro on Cape Cod was a modest structure built in the thirties, one-storied, gray-shingled, and weather-beaten. At one end of the house were four small bedrooms and two baths, at the other a living room, a dining room, and a kitchen. The front door opened onto a bare, grassless stretch of white sand sloping down to the rocky beach. A small dune rose up behind the house, just high enough to make the house invisible to walkers or drivers on the shell-paved private road that wandered along the coast here. The house’s casual, comfortable furnishings and its low-key appearance masked its real value, since few properties on this part of the Cape could now boast two hundred yards of private beach—so much had been taken over in the creation of the National Seashore in the fifties.

On Friday afternoon, Cassandra took off from work early, picked up Verity, and arrived in time for late-afternoon sunbathing. The house had been opened at the beginning of June, but none of them had used it with any frequency. Cassandra and Jonathan had been too busy, and too disturbed by the death of their father; Verity had been too lazy to be bothered with the trip down. As soon as she had put away her clothes in bureau drawers fragrant with lavender, Verity announced with unaccustomed energy, “I’m going over to the grocery store.”

She brought back lobsters, avocados, and a sampling of fresh fruit. “This place seems so empty with just us. I wish you had invited Rocco and Apple.”

“No. This weekend is family, just family. Besides, People is doing a fill-in at Channel One tonight and tomorrow,” said Cassandra. “It came up this afternoon when Amoebas in Bondage had to cancel. It’s going to be broadcast live on ZBC radio. Unfortunately, the signal won’t reach this far. I really wish we could hear them. They’re playing with Solar Blood and Judy’s Tiny Head.”

Verity looked up with a grin. “You’re really getting into all this, aren’t you?”

Their dinner was relaxed and pleasant. Over the Atlantic the sky was a refulgent cobalt. Verity asked Cassandra about the Press and her projects there. And when Cassandra replied, Verity seemed genuinely interested.

Afterward, as Cassandra made coffee, Verity shaped four lines of coke on the glass coffee table. This time, without demur, Cassandra joined her sister, not admitting until afterward that it was her first time.

They sat at opposite ends of a bamboo couch with faded green cushions. Light from a fringed floor lamp burned low and cast the room in comfortable shadow. A cool, salt-sparked breeze drifted into the room from the ocean, and the steady, gentle lapping of the water was matched by the creaking of Cassandra’s rocker, as she levered it with one foot on the bare wood floor.

“I’m glad we came here,” said Verity at last.

“Me too,” said Cassandra quickly. “I don’t know, just when I think the family is falling apart, and I wonder if it’s the result of Father’s dying, something like this happens, and I know we’re still in there together.

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