Dark Water Rising Read Online Free Page A

into layers of pink and purple and I had to accept that I’d missed her. I hauled my heavy limbs from the surf, feeling like a dunce for letting her tangle up my thoughts the way she had. I didn’t even know her and probably never would.
    Ben and I changed back into our street clothes while sunset colors slid away. By the time we started home, there was nothing left but twinkling silver in a black umbrella sky. The electric lamps, perched high on tall pilings out in the surf, flickered on, and I heard cheers from late-night swimmers.
    “Skinny-dippers,” Ben said, grinning. “They swim just beyond the light—sometimes as many as two hundred men—naked as the day they were born.”
    I shook my head and laughed. It was hard to imagine.
    We took Twenty-fourth Street back to Avenue N where nightfall had transformed the Garten Verein into something out of one of Kate’s fairy tales. Electric light spilled across the grounds, gilding leaves and blossoms and ladies’ white lace gowns. The open dancing pavilion sparkled through the trees like a great Chinese lantern.
    I stopped to listen to the band, to the way the music mingled with the sounds of surf and the soft crash of bowling pins, and I might’ve stayed far longer if Ben hadn’t pulled me away. But it was late, and tomorrow I’d be only three days away from my future.

Chapter
4
    Ezra’s rooster woke me the next morning, pulling me from something soft and murmuring, dragging me back to my crowded island of mosquito netting. I pushed Matt off my arm, threw back the netting, and stumbled for the door.
    Once in the hall, I ran into Mama, holding a step stool and pulling Kate behind her. She gave me a sleepy look and held a finger to her lips. “Where are you going?” she whispered.
    “Out back,” I said, fully aware of what was coming next.
    “Good.” She pushed the step stool at me. “Then you can take your sister for me. I’ve got to get dressed and help with breakfast.”
    “Mom, I can’t.
I
have to go.”
    “Well, Seth, you’re going anyway.”
    I stared at her for a moment, all rumpled in her tired blue robe. I was tempted to walk down the stairs andleave her standing there, and one day I might. But not today.
    Outside, a fiery glow barely flickered on the horizon, and already the sticky-damp heat clung to my skin and sat heavy in my chest. We walked to the backyard, past the small magnolia tree near the side stairs, and swung the outhouse door open. Spiders and cockroaches scrambled for safety while Kate hid her face in my nightshirt.
    “Are they gone, yet?” she whispered.
    I clenched my teeth, hearing Mama’s voice plain as day in my head, saying, “She thinks you’re the only one who can get the bugs to go home to their babies.”
    “Yeah, they’re gone.” I dropped the stool and kicked it close to the seat. “You can go in now.”
    “Thank you, Seth,” she said, stepping onto the stool.
    I closed the door and waited. “I’m through,” she called after a few moments.
    I let her out, shooed her toward the house, and pushed the stool aside. “Dang-it-all,” I whispered to the walls. “How long can a man be expected to take his baby sister to the toilet?” I stepped back out, and the door slammed shut behind me. I cringed at the sound, but it quickly disappeared on the salt-damp breeze to disturb the neighbors up the street.
    Before I headed back, a movement around the small frame house near the alley caught my eye. Ezra was inhis garden, cutting okra from tall stalks. A dented pan lay at his feet, already half full of the prickly harvest.
    I’d heard Uncle Nate say that he let the colored man live rent-free in the two-room house in exchange for help with horses and chores. He appeared quite handy with a hammer and saw, too. The clapboard siding was bare of paint, but the windows were neatly shuttered and the gables embellished with spindled woodwork, all of which looked in good repair. So were the fences around the garden and