Girl Three Read Online Free Page B

sprawled in every direction. Mature trees with barren branches lined potholed streets. The cemetery reminded Jessie of something out of a Brontë novel. Just as old and much more forgotten.
    Why would my father put Sam here?
    The main road led to a tiny Gothic chapel set on a knoll near the middle of the burial grounds. Weather had beaten its pebbled exterior, leaving large areas naked to the brick. Its stained-glass windows appeared colorless in the sluggish light. A fair number of cars were parked nearby—although Jessie would have expected many more—along with a funeral limousine and a television news van.
    The cab pulled to the front of the church. A short man wearing a hat, a black overcoat, and a gold-tone nametag stood outside its doors. Their faded red paint and decorative scrolled-iron hinges added whimsy to the otherwise bleak setting.
    “I’ll get out here.” Jessie handed the fare to the driver.
    Outside, a blast of bitter wind whipped her hair across her face. She anchored the layers behind her ears just as a photographer emerged from one of the nearby vehicles and snapped her picture.
    Jessie turned her face away from the camera, checked her watch, and hurried toward the church.
    She had timed her arrival to the minute—eleven a.m. Better to avoid needless preliminaries and an awkward obligation to sit with her father.
    The man in the overcoat, a representative from the funeral home, greeted her and opened the door. She stepped inside on tiptoes and her heart plummeted.
    There were no mourning friends and no flowers. No music or sound except the thrum-and-swish of her pulse in her ears. An elderly, black-robed minister stood at the altar, facing a lone person seated in the front row.
    Her father.
    He hadn’t mentioned that Sam’s service would be private. Jessie drew in a breath, the air thick with humidity and mildew, and choked back several curses. Foul names for her father flew through her mind, out of sync with the lulling cadence of the scripture the minister quoted.
    “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil…”
    She took a seat in the back pew and bowed her head.
    “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies…”
    The scripture droned in the background of her frantic thoughts. She had stepped into the church and right into her father’s trap. It hadn’t occurred to her that she might face him alone, and she wasn’t sure she could. Why subject herself to inevitable disappointment? He’d proven time and time again that he had no interest in being her father.
    Unable to focus, she sat through a generic eulogy and more scripture. The moment the minister began the benediction, she crept into the vestibule, reaching for the door as he said Amen.
    “Jessica.”
    There was no mistaking her father’s voice. It reverberated off her back and rang in her little-girl ears. She stiffened, yet willed herself to keep moving, to walk out the door, chin up and careless, the way he had left her and Sam years ago.
    But regardless of the sins of her unredeemable father, deep down Jessie desperately hoped he would change.
    She turned around and caught a glimpse of the minister exiting through a door adjacent to the altar, his black robe billowing behind him.
    Jessie tried to appear unaffected as her father strode up the center aisle with an authoritative swagger, carrying his briefcase at his side. He looked older than he had on television and in pictures she’d seen on the news. Yet the rest of him was the same—the uneven features that managed to captivate, the cleft chin. The tilt of his head, as if he were always judging, always looking for a reason to rule against you.
    He stopped in front of her, too close, his once-familiar eyes never veering from hers. All this time, all these years, and yet in them, she saw no remorse. With the altar in the background, he looked even bigger than she’d made him in her mind.
    “My daughter,” he said