What Happened to My Sister: A Novel Read Online Free Page A

ma’am, I promise,” I say.
    Her eyes went to slits like they do when she’s making sure I’m not being smart with her , so I knew yes, ma’am , was definitely the answer she needed to hear. But I’m still not a hundred percent sure if anything about anything also means the murder. If that’s what she was talking about she would’ve said that instead of anything about anything , right? I’m trying to think up a list of what she wouldn’t want to take along with us but other than Richard (who’s dead anyway so he couldn’t come with us even if she wanted him to) and Emma, I got nothing to write down. So it’s not really a list, it’s more like two names taking up space in my notebook.
    Momma turns back to the steering wheel, puts the car in Drive, and says, “We’re turning the page, Caroline Parker.”
    And then Miracle Number Two comes along and near to blows my head clean off my neck.
    Completely out of nowhere and for the first time in the history of the world, Momma pats my knee. First she lets me sit in thefront seat. Then she pats my knee. Momma doesn’t ever touch softly so I figure it’s best not to call attention to it in case it scares her from ever doing it again. I hold real still. I try to breathe through my nose so my body doesn’t move but you got to have a big nose to get enough air in and my nose is little. It’s a kid’s nose. I hope when it grows it’ll end up looking like Momma’s. I cain’t recall what Daddy’s nose looked like but I bet it wasn’t all that bad because people used to say he was a real catch . After a second or two, the pat on the knee ended even though I stayed as frozen as ice in Alaska.
    When she checked left-right-left to see if it was safe to pull out of our dirt driveway I looked over at her real quick and I swear on a stack of Bibles I caught her smiling big—showing her teeth even. Momma hasn’t smiled since … well, I cain’t remember the last time I saw Momma smile.
    “Here we go,” she said. And there it was again, Momma smiling bright as day right out in the open.
    That’s most certainly Miracle Number Three .

CHAPTER THREE
    Carrie
    Coming down from the mountains where it’s shady cool to the flat land is real exciting even if it is 102 degrees down here like the radio man just said. I never been off the mountain before so my head’s a windshield wiper turning right-then-left-then-right trying to take it all in. All this time we had a big ole front yard—miles and miles of it—and I didn’t even know it. No one ever told me. After a spell, I look back at where we came down from, across the farmland to the hills, and to me it looks as if a giant swept rocks and trees into piles of mountains and just let the flat land in the middle do what it was going to do anyway—stay flat. The air carries this grit you cain’t see till after it’s got itself all over you and ever-thing around you. Even in your mouth—you crunch it. You can taste the dust.
    “How you doing over there?” Momma hollers over the radio playing some singer she says she used to have records of. Sounds like old-fogy music to me, if you want to know the truth.
    “Fine,” I holler back.
    I decide not to mention the dust because Momma would call me a complainer. Momma can’t abide complainers. She says the only thing to complain about is a complainer .
    “Put that window all the way down,” Momma says. “Let’s get a better crosswind going.”
    This is a great idea. I figure the crosswind’ll keep the dust from settling on us. Our car doesn’t have air-conditioning on account of it being as old as Moses. That’s why we have to open windows. The window on my side is hard because the crank handle’s long gone. What you have to do if you want it down is use these pinchers from Richard’s toolbox, stick them real careful in the hole where the handle used to be, like in the game Operation, and turn hard until the glass decides to start moving. My hands are so sweaty I