The Mystery of Hollow Places by Podos Rebecca

Author:Podos, Rebecca [Podos, Rebecca]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-01-25T16:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

“Come on, make one phone call in your big-boy voice,” Jessa pleads through the white cloud of her breath. “It will take you two minutes, and then you can go back to teaching grown adults how to fall down a hill. Do it for Im!”

I inspect a piece of lint on the sleeve of my coat, unable to look Chad in the eye. The blurred memory of him over his playing cards, the sympathy on his face, makes my skin feel too tight.

“It’s not like I don’t want to help you, Imogene.” He frowns, pushing off the hood of his jacket and stomping the heavy powder off his boots in the doorway of the lodge. He’s just come off the Blue Triangle course at the Marple Slopes, a little more than an hour northwest of Boston.

The lodge seems crowded for a Monday, everybody in their bright zippered ski gear, swish-swishing as they raise their arms, clomping heavy-footed in their boots toward fake log tables. This is how other kids spend their February breaks: riding ski lifts up the slopes, inhaling Cokes and French fries, hurling soaked ski gloves at each other like nylon grenades. Chad guides us to a quieter spot by the garbage cans outside the Marple Grill. The smell of meat and sauerkraut curls around us, and though I thought the long drive had given me time to regroup, I press the back of my hand to my mouth. Jessa looks similarly grossed out. Raising a pale eyebrow wet with snow spray, Chad scoffs, “Not feeling so awesome, are you? Let it be a lesson. You go sailing with the Captain, sometimes you get thrown overboard. Next time, listen to me.”

“Ugh, never mind, Chadwick,” Jessa says, clearly wrestling her gag reflex under control. “Just please do it?”

“Can’t you tell me why I’m lying on the job? Is this . . . is this about last night?”

“Chad, just leave it alone,” Jessa cuts in, an uncharacteristic growl in her voice.

Her brother trains his eyes on me and I lift my chin, bracing for more questions, for a repeat of last night’s pity party. Instead he peels off his gloves and wipes a hand down his face, flushed from the cold. “What do you need me to say?”

If he’s willing to let it go, so am I. More than willing. Gratefully, I tell him how on the drive over, Jessa looked around and found an optometrist’s office called Lionel Sorbousek Eye Care in Torrington, Connecticut. It’s the closest match to Lil’s guess at my mother’s former employer. And I explain my plan. “But we need a grown-up.”

A familiar dimple punctuates his left cheek.

“I mean we need someone who sounds like a grown-up.”

I follow him into the office off the ski shop while Jessa stands watch outside. Not that this is a high-risk mission. The young employees in the lodge seem more interested in sharing epic stories of their epic weekends than in whatever’s happening in their third-rate ski slope’s tiny back office.

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