What Janie Found Read Online Free Page A

from my parents, by the way,’” said Kathleen. “They’re coming next weekend. I can’t wait for them to meet you.’” She tipped up the bill of his cap and kissed his eyelids. “They’ll love you, Stephen. We’re going to have dinner at the Boulderado. I want you to wear your khaki pants, I’m going to iron them, and your yellow shirt, I’ll iron that, too.’”
    But Stephen dreaded the thought of another family. He had refused to become friends with Janie’s Connecticut family and he did not feel up to impressing Kathleen’s California family. One family in this world was plenty.

CHAPTER
THREE
    “What folder?’” said Janie to her little brother. She tried to keep her voice breezy, but instead it broke.
    She turned into her driveway. Small green bushes divided hers from Reeve’s. She suppressed the urge to drive over them and flatten them, just to be stronger than something. She parked by the side door. The Johnsons didn’t use their garage. It was full of stuff. Cars hadn’t fit for years.
    She took the keys out of the ignition and put her hands up to protect her face. The instant she no longer had the task of driving, tears attacked.
    The boys sat waiting for her to get control back. They weren’t going to open their car doors till she did and she didn’t want to leave the safe tidy enclosure of a vehicle.
    “You give everything away, Janie,’” explained her brother. “Your face shows everything you’re thinking.’”
    At that moment, Janie could have given them all away: every person related to her, and every person who pretended to be.
    Pretending was fine when you were little and pretended with dolls or blocks or wooden trains. But to pretend forever? To find, once more, that her life was a fantasy spun by the people who supposedly loved her?
    She stared at her home, a big old shingled house modernized with great slabs and chunks of window. So many lies hidden behind such clear glass. Her unshed tears were so hot she thought they might burn her eyes and leave her blind.
    I stayed here! she thought. I gave up my birth family to come back here.
    The irony of it burned as badly as tears.
    “The label on the file folder,’” said Reeve very softly, “was H. J.’”
    Janie flattened her hands on her cheeks and pressed inward toward her nose, squashing everything against its freckled tip. “H. J.,’” she said, voice squeezed between her lips like toothpaste, “stands for Hunting Jaguars.’”
    They all knew what H. J. stood for. But Reeve let it go. “Hex on Jellybeans,’” he agreed.
    I could hex a few people right now, she thought. I’m not ready for this! I’ve never been ready. I wasn’t ready to find out my parents aren’t my parents. I wasn’t ready to find out I was kidnapped. I wasn’t ready to have Reeve sell me on his radio show. I wasn’t ready to have my Connecticut father suffer a heart attack and a stroke. And I’m not ready to find out that he—
    “Perfect timing!’” called a sharp high voice, and sharp high heels stabbed steps and pavement.
    Of Reeve’s two older sisters and one older brother, Lizzie was the scary one. Thinner than anybody, not tall, not beautiful, she didn’t walk, she stalked. Her frown started upward from her chin instead of downward from her forehead, and you fell into her frown, ready to confess to anything.
    As a courtroom lawyer she must be terrifying. Janie could imagine juries cowering in their corner; witnesses desperate to please. How relieved everybody in Connecticut had been when Lizzie decided to practice law in California.
    And now Lizzie was in love.
    This was amazing, but more amazing was that some man had fallen in love with Lizzie. Who would want to spend a lifetime in the same apartment as Lizzie Shields? Everybody was eager to meet William.
    “Come inside, Janie,’” said Lizzie sternly. “We’ll measure you.’”
    Can’t make it, Lizzie, thought Janie. I have a temper tantrum waiting. A file folder to