Not a Chance in Helen Read Online Free Page B

Amber’s untouched dinner and opened the refrigerator door. There wasn’t much to look at inside beyond half a cantaloupe, a doggy bag from the Denny’s in Alton, and a nearly expired carton of milk.
    When was the last time she’d gotten to the grocery store?
    She’d had so many bridge games lately, not to mention the planning sessions of the Ladies Civic Improvement League and a smattering of other causes entailing lunches and dinners out, that she’d put off making a supermarket run.
    She retrieved several slices of American cheese that, upon close inspection, hadn’t yet hardened around the edges. She scrounged up the remnants of a tub of butter and two slices of bread—a little hard, but no mold—deciding a grilled cheese would have to do.
    The phone rang, and she dropped her stash on the countertop, hurrying to hush the darned thing before it whistled again like a demented bird.
    “Hello?”
    Jean Duncan’s voice filled her ear. “Helen? Have you eaten yet?”
    She recalled the smell of Jean’s kitchen, the taste of the olive-stuffed cheese puff, and her stomach growled. “No, not yet,” she told her, praying some kind of invitation was forthcoming.
    “How’d you like to meet me at the diner for one of Erma’s meat loaf sandwiches? After working in the kitchen half the day, I’m tired of the sight of anything even remotely gourmet.”
    Well, Helen mused, meat loaf at the diner wasn’t exactly what she’d hoped for, but it would do in a pinch. “Five minutes, okay?”
    Jean laughed. “Are you gonna fly there or walk?”
    Helen grinned, switching the receiver to her other ear. “See you shortly,” she said and hung up at Jean’s “All right.”
    Before she left, she ran a brush through her wiry gray hair, taming it as best she could. She did a quick tooth-brushing, rinsing out her mouth and patting it dry. She put on a dab of pink lipstick then grabbed up her purse and left.
    Between the craggy bluffs on the town’s either side, she could see the vague purple ribbons of sunset fading from the sky as twilight moved in, giving the stars a dark background to wink against.
    The streetlights had come on, lending an orange glow to the sidewalk as she strode ahead past picket fences and neatly kept lawns. Tulip bulbs planted before the first freeze last November now sprouted upward, their colorful buds about ready to pop.
    A dog barked from a screened-in porch, the high-pitched yips soon joined by mournful baying from another backyard.
    Helen picked up her steps, her Keds crunching over the stray gravel kicked onto the sidewalk by cars rolling up and down Jersey en route to Main Street.
    She inhaled deeply as she walked, breathing in fresh air tinged by the muddy odor of the river dead ahead. Lights shone through the windows of the houses she passed, and she spied more than a few heads bent over kitchen tables between parted curtains. At lunchtime, the streets seemed similarly empty when the carillon in the chapel’s steeple played its programmed tunes over loudspeakers and everyone within earshot scattered, heading home or to the diner for a sandwich.
    Despite the changes that had come over River Bend in recent years, much had remained as it was almost fifty years ago when she and Joe had settled here. It was one of the main reasons Helen had never moved away. Maybe it was her age, but she’d come to like knowing what each day brought. She liked the familiarity of faces, the languid pace. All the changes she wanted to see were those wrought by the seasons. She loved the starkness of winter when ice clung to eaves and branches and snow blanketed rooftops and roads. The summers seemed at times like a photograph overexposed, the sun so bright the air looked yellow. Dust from the roads covered shrubs and boats filled the river, drawing skiers across the brown waters. In the fall, the trees turned every shade of red and gold imaginable, and cars came from across the river—St. Louis and beyond—just to