Lone Star Read Online Free Page A

glanced inside one of the pots on the stove.
    â€œRaspberry jam. I made it from scratch this afternoon for the tarts. It’s still warm. You want to try?”
    Chloe did want to try, so much. “No, thank you,” she said. “I’m full.”
    â€œFull from lunch four hours ago?”
    Lang got out some orange juice, a yogurt, unboxed some Wheat Thins, opened some cheddar cheese, washed a bowl of blueberries, and set it all in front of Chloe sitting glumly at the table. She brought the long wooden spoon half-filled with warmjam to Chloe’s face. Chloe tasted it. It was so good. But she only admitted it to herself. She wouldn’t admit it to her overeager mother. “What’s for dinner?”
    â€œI’m thinking ratatouille. And pork chops. I found a spicy new recipe. With cumin. How was school?”
    Chloe didn’t know where to start. That she didn’t know how to start was more vital. She tried not to be irritated today by her mother’s earnest round face, also unmade-up and open, high cheekbones, red mouth, smiling slanting eyes, affectionate gaze, her short black hair pin-straight like Chloe’s. Tell me everything, her mother’s welcome expression said. We will deal with everything together. Chloe tried hard not to sigh, not to look away, not to wish however fleetingly for Hannah’s mother, the thin, pinched, absentminded, and largely absent Terri Gramm. “School’s good.”
    That’s it. School’s good. Nothing else. Open book, look down into food, drink the OJ, don’t look up, don’t speak. Soon enough, jam would have to be cooled, the Linzer tarted, the ratatouille stewed.
    Trouble was, today Chloe needed to talk to her mother. Or at least begin to try to talk to her. She needed a passport. Otherwise all her little dreams were just vapor. She had kept her dreams deliberately small, thinking they might be easier to realize, but now feared she hadn’t kept them small enough.
    â€œAre you going to write a story too?” her mother said. “You should. Ten thousand dollars is amazing . I bet Hannah is going to write one. She fancies herself to be good at things. You will too, of course, right?”
    Who wouldn’t be exasperated? What kind of a mother knew about things that happened that day in fourth-period English, before her child even had a chance to open her mouth? Chloe contained her agitation. After all, her mother had unwittingly offered her the opening she needed.
    â€œYou discussed it with Hannah and your boys?” Lang prodded.
    â€œNot necessarily. Why would you say that?”
    â€œBecause you took nearly forty-five minutes to walk home from the bus. It usually takes you fifteen. What else are you doing if not discussing the Acadia Award for Short Fiction?”
    Again, easy to suppress a giant sigh? Chloe didn’t think so. She sighed giantly. “I’m not entering it, Mom. I’ve got nothing to say. What am I going to write about?”
    Lang stared at Chloe calmly. For a moment the mother and daughter didn’t speak, and in the brief silence the ominous shadows of the hollowed-out fangs of the past, essential for a story, were abundantly obvious.
    â€œI mean,” Chloe hurriedly continued, “perhaps I could write about Kilkenny. But I can’t, can I?” When Chloe was eleven, her parents had gone to Ireland without her. They said it was for a funeral. Pfft.
    Lang continued to stare calmly at Chloe. “You don’t need Kilkenny to write a story,” she said. “There are other things. Or, you make it up. That’s why they call it fiction.”
    â€œMake it up from what?”
    â€œI don’t know. What’s Blake making it up from?”
    â€œHow do you know this? No, don’t tell me. I’ve seen nothing. But Blake has seen rats and—” She stopped herself from saying used condoms .
    â€œYou have an imagination, don’t