Sanctuary Read Online Free

I wasn’t going to get into a wreck. Because except for the lead foot thing, I’m a good driver. A
really
good driver.
    Too bad I suck at pretty much everything else.
    My mother’s car is a Rabbit. It doesn’t have nearly the power of my dad’s Volvo, but it’s got punch. Plus, with me being so short, it’s a little easier to maneuver. I backed out of the driveway—piece of cake, even in the dark—and pulled out onto empty Lumbley Lane. Across the street, all the lights in the Hoadley place—I mean, the Thompkins place—were blazing. I looked up, at the windows directly across the street from my bedroom dormers. Those, I knew, from having seen her in them, were Tasha Thompkins’s bedroom windows. The Thompkinses, who had grandparents visiting—I knew because they’d turned down my mom and dad’s invitation to Thanksgiving dinner on account of their already having their own guests—had eaten earlier than we had, if Nate had been sent out two hours ago for whipped cream. Tasha, I could see, was upstairs in her room already. I wondered what she was doing. I hoped not homework. But Tasha sort of seemed like the homework-after-Thanksgiving-dinner kind of girl.
    Unlike me. I was the sneak-out-to-meet-her-boyfriend-after-Thanksgiving-dinner kind of girl.
    And at that moment, I was more glad than I’d been in a long, long time to be me. I didn’t wonder, not even for a second, what it might be like to be Tasha, much less her brother Nate.
    Except of course if I had—if I had bothered to think, even for a minute, about Nate Thompkins—he’d probably still be alive today.

C H A P T E R
3
    “G osh, Mrs. Wilkins,” I said. “That was the best pumpkin pie I ever had.”
    Rob’s mom brightened. “You really think so, Jess?”
    “Yes, ma’am,” I said, meaning it. “Better than my dad’s, even.”
    “Well, I doubt that,” Mrs. Wilkins said with a laugh. She looked pretty in the soft light over the kitchen sink, with all her red hair piled up on top of her head. She had on a nice dress, too, a silk one in jade green. She didn’t look like a mom. She looked like she was somebody’s girlfriend. Which she was, in fact. She was this guy Gary-No-Really-Just-Call-Me-Gary’s girlfriend.
    But she was also my boyfriend Rob’s mom.
    “Isn’t your dad a gourmet cook?” Just-Call-Me-Gary asked, as he helped bring in the dishes from the Wilkinses’ dining room table.
    “Well,” I said. “I don’t know about gourmet. But he’s a good cook. Still, his pumpkin pie can’t hold a candle to yours, Mrs. Wilkins.”
    “Go on,” Mrs. Wilkins said, flushing with pleasure. “Me? Better than a gourmet cook? I don’t think so.”
    “Sure is good enough for me,” Gary said, and he put his arms around her waist, and sort of danced her around the kitchen.
    I noticed Rob, watching from the kitchen door, kind of grimace, then turn around and walk away. Maybe Rob had a right to be disgusted. He worked with Just-Call-Me-Gary at his uncle’s auto repair shop. It was through Rob that Mrs. Wilkins had met Just-Call-Me-Gary in the first place.
    After watching Gary and Rob’s mom dance for a few seconds more—they actually looked pretty good together, since he was all lean and tall and good looking in a cowboy sort of way, and she was all pretty and plump in a dance hall girl kind of way—I followed Rob out into the living room, where he’d switched on the TV, and was watching football.
    And Rob is not a huge sports fan. Like me, he prefers bikes.
    Motorbikes, that is.
    “Hey,” I said, flopping down onto the couch next to him. “Why so glum, chum?”
    Which was a toolish thing to say, I know, but when confronted with six feet of hot, freshly showered male in softly faded denim, it is hard for a girl like me to think straight.
    “Nothing.” Rob, normally fairly uncommunicative, at least where his deepest emotions were concerned—like, for instance, the ones he felt for me—aimed the remote and changed the