The Unloved Read Online Free

don’t know everything.”
    “And you don’t know anything!” Julie shot back, then realized that was probably exactly the response Jeff had been hoping for. Before she could say any more, Anne twisted around in the front seat to give both her children a warning look.
    “Ten more minutes,” she said. “And we can do without any quarrels for the rest of the trip. All right?”
    “I didn’t start it,” Jeff piped. “All I did was ask a question. How am I supposed to learn anything if I can’t ask questions? Dad always says—”
    In spite of herself, Anne began laughing. “All right, all right! I don’t care who started it, I just don’t want it to go any further. And if you want to ask questions, go ahead.”
    Jeff’s response was instantaneous. “How come we’ve never been here before?”
    Once again Julie answered her brother’s question before her mother had a chance to say anything. “Because Dad doesn’t like Grandmother,” she said.
    “Why not?” Jeff pressed. “What’s wrong with her?”
    Out of the corner of her eye Anne saw Kevin’s jaw tighten, and his knuckles whiten as he squeezed the steering wheel, “It’s not that,” she said quickly, hoping to distract Jeff’s attention. “It’s just that it’s a long way from Connecticut, and we’ve never really had the time.”
    “But we go on a vacation every year,” Jeff argued. “Why couldn’t we have come down here? It’s a better beach than the one on Cape Cod.”
    “I thought you liked False Harbor,” Anne replied, welcoming the chance to change the subject.
    “It’s okay,” Jeff reluctantly agreed. Then he spotted a sign as they passed it: DEVEREAUX —10 MILES. “WOW ,” he breathed. “Is there really a whole town named after Dad?”
    For the first time in more than an hour, Kevin spoke. “It’s not named after me,” he said, his voice tight and his words clipped. “It’s named after my family, and it’s been there for a couple of hundred years. And it’s not much of a town.”
    The tone of his father’s voice made Jeff glance uneasily at his sister, but Julie didn’t seem to know what was wrong with their father either. “What’s wrong with it?” he finally ventured.
    “In a few minutes you’ll see,” Kevin replied. Then he lapsed back into the heavy silence he had maintained all morning. For the next ten miles no one in the car spoke.
    And then, abruptly, Kevin pulled the car off the road and stopped. “There it is,” he said. “That’s Devereaux. That’s where I grew up.”
    Jeff opened the back door and scrambled out, then climbed to the top of a low bank that separated the road from the beach.
    Ahead, another half mile down the road, was a worn-lookingcollection of buildings, some of them almost hidden in a tangle of vines. He could see a church steeple, an Exxon sign, and what looked like a row of shabby stores. There was also a scattering of houses, most of them fairly run-down, a few of them clearly abandoned. He looked up at his father, who was standing beside him now, Jeff’s disappointment clear on his face. “Is that all there is?” he asked.
    “It goes on for about half a mile,” Kevin told him. “But it all looks pretty much the same. I suppose there are still a few nice places, but it just keeps getting worse.” He smiled wryly. “Still want to spend your vacation here?”
    “But what happened to it?” Anne asked. “It looks like it must have been a nice town once.”
    “It was,” Kevin agreed. “A long time ago, before I was born. Probably before my father was born. It used to be cotton plantations, until the land wore out.”
    “But which house is yours?” Julie asked. “Where do Grandmother and Aunt Marguerite live?”
    “Out there,” Kevin said quietly, turning away from the town and pointing to a low island two hundred yards off shore, connected to the mainland by a narrow causeway built up from the shallow seabed. “That’s Sea Oaks, where I grew