Skinny Dipping Read Online Free Page A

from killing those kids. I’m gonna put a moratorium on teenage boys at Chez Ducky. If I gotta be the goddamn head of this goddamn place I might as well get some satisfaction out of it. Unless you want to be the head of the place?”
    “Ha. Ha. No, thank you.”
    She hadn’t thought so. It was too bad. “Can I take the inner tube?” she asked. “I’m not as strong a swimmer as I used to be.”
    “Sure,” Mimi said. “You sure you don’t want me to come with you?”
    “Nah,” Birgie replied absently. She was thinking. What she needed was a replacement. But who? The Olsons of Chez Ducky had always been led by a matriarch, and the only other old ladies around were Birgie’s dead brothers’ widows, Naomi and Johanna. Neither would work. Naomi had been halfway round the bend for years and Johanna was so frantic trying to keep hidden the fact that she’d lately started shacking up with Charlie, her long-dead husband’s twin, that she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. But there was no reason Mimi couldn’t head the family.
    True, Birgie couldn’t think of anyone more ill suited for the job, but she also couldn’t think of anyone better equipped. Ill suited by virtue of her temperament, well equipped by virtue of her abilities. Mimi might deny it with her dying breath, but the fact was that everyone knew that during Ardis’s last few years it had been Mimi who’d been the glue that had held Chez Ducky together. She’d sent in the taxes, arranged to have the septic tank sucked, kept track of…whatever needed to be kept track of.
    True, Mimi might hate it, but she could do it. Hell, she might even keep Chez Ducky from being sold, and that would be good for her. Okay, them. Two birds, one stone.
    True, Mimi would never agree, and she couldn’t be pressed into service. Mimi had withstood her mother’s demands to apply herself and do something—anything—for three decades.
    But if Birgie was really good, really careful, and played this right, Mimi might be slipped into the position. Like an oyster slips down your throat.
    Hell , Birgie thought as she dipped up and down on the corner of the raft, sending the pontoon rocking violently, it was worth a shot. She dove into the lake, causing barely a ripple.

Chapter Two
    Birgie was wrong, Mimi thought, studying the family holdings. Chez Ducky hadn’t changed. The same shorn-off boulder on which a half-dozen generations of Olsons had tanned still basked in the same bulrush-choked waters where, Mimi was quite certain, the same family of leeches still waited patiently to attach themselves to the next crop of Olson bottoms.
    True, the cottages had faded to gray and their gutters sprouted seedlings. And the slide some forgotten Olsons had pilfered from some long-closed school yard had rusted and now listed sideways in the water as though attempting to struggle out of the lake and return to the playground. But other than those small signs of passing time, things were the same now as they’d been when Mimi was born. Or her father was born. Or her grandfather.
    A single electrical wire connected them to the outside world. No telephone lines, no gas lines, no sewage lines. Here, the past and present not so much coexisted as existed parallel to each other.
    It was too bad Birgie wasn’t enjoying the last few days of summer before they shut the place down for the season. But Mimi would be acting weird, too, if she had a bunch of people expecting things of her. Thank God, she didn’t. And wouldn’t. If Birgie did squirm out of this—and it looked like she might—her sister-in-law, Mimi’s great-aunt Johanna, was heir apparent, then Mimi’s grandfather’s second wife and widow, Naomi. Okay, maybe Mimi’s step-grandmother Naomi would need a regent. After Naomi came Debbie, who was married to Naomi’s son and Mimi’s half-uncle, Bill.
    Debbie. Always doing things, fixing things, organizing things. Though she didn’t seriously think Debbie could single-handedly