Edgewater Read Online Free Page A

on. “How about a lobster roll on the boardwalk? There are a lot of cute guys in town this summer.”
    â€œYou know I have no interest in meeting anyone,” I said.
    â€œI’m talking people-watching,” she said. “Not that there’s anything wrong with meeting anyone.”
    â€œI don’t want a boyfriend.” With my house, with my family, it would be too complicated.
    â€œYou will,” she assured me with the wisdom of an older person who has seen much more. “When you meet the right person.”
    â€œYou don’t have a boyfriend,” I reminded her.
    â€œThat’s because Nathan and I just broke up,” she said.
    â€œWell, apparently there are a lot of cute guys in town this summer,” I told her.
    â€œAll right, point taken. So how about just us and no ulterior motives? It’s not like Twizzlers are enough of a dinner. We’ll get lobster rolls and waffle fries, and we’ll split the brownie sundae. What do you say?”
    I shook my head. “Sorry, not tonight,” I said. “I have to get this over with. Can you pop the trunk?”
    â€œDone.”
    â€œThanks, Len. I mean, for everything.”
    â€œI’m here whenever, Lorrie. A phone call away.”
    â€œI know,” I told her. “We’ll start senior year tomorrow. I promise.”
    I waited until Lennox’s car was out of sight before I forced myself to face the house, to really look at it. In just three weeks it seemed to have fallen into even greater disrepair. Storm-fallen branches crisscrossed the porch, just as they had the driveway, like the start of a game of pick-up sticks. The porch swing hung at an angle, the rope so frayed, it had finally snapped on oneside. I dragged my duffel up the steps. It was no use holding my breath this time, and as I pushed the door open, I was met by the trademark smell of Edgewater, something between cat urine and sour milk. It was almost a physical thing that moved through the rooms, up your nose, and into the little crevices of your closed mouth.
    I headed back to the dresser by the stairs and rummaged through the rest of the drawers, just to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. An enormous Maine coon cat—either Abeline or Carolina; I didn’t know and didn’t care—squatted on the second step of the staircase to relieve herself. Oh, good: This pee stain would match all the other pee stains on the carpet runner. And if you looked carefully where the carpet had worn thin, you could spy vegetation growing through the floorboards—mushrooms or mold. In middle-school science class, we’d read about how long it would take nature to invade the spaces we’d worked so hard to keep clean, should humans ever cease to exist. Our house could be a case study in that concept. Not exactly
Architectural Digest
material any longer.
    From around the corner came a noise I couldn’t quite make out, but someone was in there, in the kitchen. Once, I’d heard a kitchen described as the heartbeat of a house, the place where everyone gathered for sustenance and restoration. Ours was more where things went to die.
    It was time to find my aunt, and that’s where I’d start.

3
    HOME SWEET HOME
    GIGI WASN’T IN THE KITCHEN, BUT SUSANNAH WAS, bent over a cardboard box on the table. I didn’t need to peer inside to know that something frail and sickly was contained within. Instead, I observed my sister, who remained oblivious to me, to the smell—possibly even worse in the kitchen—and to the harsh static of the radio on the counter. Her thick strawberry-blond hair was in its customary braid down her back, her checked dress, while “new” to my eyes, was likely some discard she’d found at a tag sale. Her feet were, as usual, bare and caked with dirt. When we were young, Gigi had called Susannah the “child of light” because of her hair, not to mention her sunny