Wynn in Doubt Read Online Free Page B

pillow beside me, the same place that Oliver’s face stared back at me last night. I used to fantasize about a secret family that would rescue me from my boring one and take me on noble quests and dangerous expeditions. It seems I may not have given my real family enough credit.

three
    “Hello? Mom? Dad?” I close my parents’ front door behind me and walk to the kitchen. Every square inch of white countertop has been taken over by lumps of brown clay in various shapes and sizes. I pick one up and turn it over. It looks like something a kindergartner would make. If they were really bad at crafts. And didn’t have hands.
    I call out again, more urgently this time. “Mom, where are you? What’s with all the pottery?”
    “Just a minute,” she yells from down the hall, her voice stifled by a closed door.
    I return the clay whatever-it’s-supposed-to-be to the counter and gingerly take the article from my purse. I reread it for the twentieth time today, focusing again on the name. Lola. My mother inherited Grams’s zeal for a normal life. I’ve debated for days whether or not to ask her about the woman in the article, but I’ve decided I need answers. Was she my great-grandmother? If so, why were we told she died years before then? And the question bothering me most of all: What was she doing in Kentucky? Why did she leave? What could have driven her away from her daughter?
    “Hey, honey, why didn’t you tell us you were stopping by?” My mother breezes in, running a hand through disheveled hair. Her shirt is buttoned crookedly and inside out.
    Something’s off. Something’s very, very off . . . “Mom, your shirt,” I say, pointing.
    She looks down, her fingers skid across the mismatched closures. “Oops! I guess I was in a hurry this morning.” The corners of her mouth are turned up innocently, but I’m not buying it. I shared a room with Tabby. I know the booty-call smile when I see it.
    “Mom, where’s Dad?”
    “Right here, sweet pea.” Dad’s big hands squeeze my shoulders, making me jump. He’s showing too many teeth.
    “Eww.” I step away from my father. A war between knowledge and ignorance has begun in my brain. I close my eyes and shake my head, trying to erase all thoughts of my parents’ afternoon delight from my mind like an Etch A Sketch.
    “What? What, eww?” My mom fans herself with her crooked shirt.
    “Nothing, just—let’s not talk about it.” I give them both a warning glance. “What’s the deal with all the pottery?”
    Dad tosses a smallish piece in the air, then catches it easily behind his back. His manner is giddy and spry, and I don’t want to think about what’s caused it. “This”—he says, handing me the . . . what? Vase? Pot? Ashtray? I take it with my free hand—“is your mother’s and my new hobby.”
    “You’re making clay pot things?”
    “Don’t be too hard on us. We just started yesterday,” Mom says, admiring a wonky piece.
    “And what brought this on?”
    “Oh, you know.” She shrugs her shoulders at me. “We were watching Ghost on TV the other night and, well, you know that scene with Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore? When she’s at the potter’s wheel and he comes and sits behind her and one thing leads to another—”
    “No. No, no, no, no, no. No.” I set the pot my father handed me back on the ledge, then do the same with hers. “No.” I’ve had enough surprises for one week. My father becoming Patrick Swayze is going too far.
    “What?” Her level voice reveals nothing, but the upward tilt of her lips is unmistakably playful. I’m torn. She’s been so sad, it’s nice to see her mood lighten—but I don’t want to know any more about what’s brought it on.
    “I’m sorry. I can’t listen to a story about you and Dad making . . . pottery together.”
    “Oh, we made pottery.” Dad plucks the largest piece from the table and raises his eyebrows at me. “We made pottery all night long.”
    I’m going to need a