Winter's Destiny Read Online Free Page B

her watch and pounded on the door. It wasn’t quite eight a.m., but he’d be up; he’d been an early riser all his life. The door opened and Amy leaned across the wheelchair to give her grandfather a warm hug. He smelled of soap. His craggy face was lined with crevices and ridges; his reading glasses perched halfway down his nose, and the hazel eyes peering over them, danced with delight. “Checking to see if I’m still alive, are ya?” he bellowed.
    “I know you’re still alive, Gramps,” she replied. “No point visiting a corpse.” Gripping the handles of the wheelchair, she swung it into the living room, kicking the front door closed behind her. “How’re you doing?” she asked him.
    “Better, now you’re here,” he hollered.
    Amy motioned for him to lower his voice. He refused to wear a hearing aide. “Sorry,” he yelled.
    “Get you anything?” Amy looked at his bony frame and frowned.
    “Nope. Had breakfast hours ago. Day’s half over.”
    “I can hear you,” Amy said loudly.
    “Keep forgettin’. Hardly talk to anybody anymore,” he grumbled pointedly.
    Amy curled into a corner of the old leather couch that had been in her grandparents’ living room since she could remember. “Something happened at our house last night,” Amy told him. When she saw that she had his undivided attention, she related what had occurred, pausing occasionally for his reaction. Seeing none, she continued.
    Even though Gramps Hadden was in his seventies, his mind was sharp. The two of them had always been close. She knew him as well as he knew her. He was the quiet type—a thinker, not a talker. Until sixteen years ago, he had been an astute businessman, opening his own carpet store just after her birth. Under his management the business had thrived, multiplying into a national chain within a decade. Then tragedy struck. His only daughter and son-in-law were killed. He sold the stores, gave the funds over to an investment firm, and became withdrawn and absent-minded. After the accident, he began spending time away from home, alone, at his cabin. Amy’s laughing, fun-loving grandfather disappeared, although he’d been, and still was, one heck of a card player.
    He taught her to play when she was two. She learned that he never revealed his hand, at cards, or in life. In later years, they’d play long into the night, Amy vowing to beat him. It finally happened when she was twelve.
    Now the old man’s stoic expression aggravated her. She watched for a sign, a twinge, any reaction at all that would indicate that he knew something about the woman Amy had seen. But of course, being the poker player that he was, he revealed nothing. Amy concluded by repeating Sheriff Wayburne’s summation. “…the car was pushed over the cliff.”
    He sat perfectly still. They eyed each other. Silence hung heavily between them. Amy watched for an indication he knew something . Finally, she saw it in his eyes. A flicker. Was it fear? Knowledge? What ?
    He cleared his throat. “Amy, I think it best if you to take Jamie and go away for a while.”
    Amy stood up. “That’s the second time I’ve heard that today.” She began pacing across the worn living room carpet, never taking her eyes off her grandfather. “Why do you want me to go away?”
    “Safer,” he said quietly, looking down. “For you and Jamie.”
    Amy caught the fear in his voice. “Safer? What do you mean?”
    He looked up at her, grimacing. “They could come back.”
    “They?”
    He shook his head.
    “Gramps,” she stopped where she was. “ Who is they? ”
    He covered his eyes with his hands and shook his head.
    Amy whirled on him, “Gramps, tell me what you’re not telling me!”
    He sat stubbornly silent. Then he whispered, “How about a coffee?”
    Amy glared at him. “Coffee! I want to hear something that makes sense. There was a woman at our house last night that looks just like me. Do you know who she is?”
    “What does it matter? Doubtful