The Great Escape (Wynette, Texas #7)(26)

She glanced toward the stairs that led to the second floor but couldn’t work up any enthusiasm for investigating. It was fully dark now, and she still needed to find a place to stay. But she didn’t want to go anywhere. She wanted to sleep right here in this big spooky house with its memories of summers past.

She returned to the main-floor bedroom. Ugly vertical blinds covered sliding doors that led to an open deck, and a sawed-off broomstick resting in the door track provided the only security. After more snooping, she found a stack of the same low-cut boxer briefs he’d bought during their shopping trip, along with a pair of black and white board shorts for swimming. She retrieved her things from the car, locked the bedroom’s outer door to keep the wild things away, and settled in.

Unexplained creaks disturbed her sleep, and toward morning, a troubling dream had her running through a house with too many rooms but no way out. The dream awakened her.

The room was cool, but her T-shirt stuck to her skin. Early morning light trickled through the vertical blinds. She stretched, then shot up in bed as she heard the click of a latch.

A boy came through the door she’d locked before she’d fallen asleep. “Get out,” she gasped.

He seemed as shocked to see her as she was to see him, but he recovered faster. His wide eyes narrowed into a belligerent glare, as if she were the interloper.

She swallowed hard. Sat up. What if she was in the wrong house after all?

He wore a baggy pair of none-too-clean gray athletic shorts, a bright yellow T-shirt printed with an electric guitar, and scuffed sneakers without socks. He was African-American, his skin a couple of shades lighter than her brother Andre’s. Small and scrawny—maybe ten or eleven—he had short, nappy hair, knobby knees, gangly arms, and a hostile expression designed to proclaim his toughness to the world. It might have worked if his antagonism hadn’t been sabotaged by an extraordinary set of thickly lashed, golden-brown eyes.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” he said, thrusting out his chin.

She thought fast. “Panda said I could stay.”

“He didn’t say anything to Gram about it.”

So this was the right house after all. Although her brain had recovered from the shock of his appearance, the rest of her hadn’t stopped shaking. “He didn’t mention you, either,” she said. “Who are you?”

But even as she asked the question, she suspected she knew the answer. This was Panda’s kid. And Panda’s beautiful, pregnant, African-American wife was in the kitchen right now, getting the place opened up for the family’s annual summer vacation, while his mother-in-law loaded the refrigerator with the groceries they’d bought on the way. All of which meant that Lucy, who’d won two good citizenship awards in high school and been president of the student body her senior year in college, was an adulterer.

“I’m Toby.” He practically spit out his name. “Who are you?”

She had to ask. “You’re Panda’s son?”

“Yeah, right. You don’t know him at all, do you? You’re some druggie from the mainland, and you broke in here because you was scared to sleep on the beach.”

His scorn was a relief. “I’m not a druggie,” she said. “My name is … It’s Viper.” The word rolled off her lips, sang in her head. She wanted to say it again. Instead, she slid her legs over the side of the bed and glanced toward the door. “Why did you break in my bedroom?”

“It wasn’t supposed to be locked.” He scratched the back of his calf with the toe of his opposite sneaker. “My gram takes care of this place. She saw your car and sent me over to see who was here.”

She refrained from pointing out that “Gram” was the world’s lousiest housekeeper. From what she’d seen, the floors had been swept only in the middle, and Gram’s dusting hadn’t included more than a few tabletops. “Meet me in the kitchen, Toby. We’ll talk there.” She straightened her twisted pajama shorts and got out of bed.

“I’m calling the police.”

“Go ahead,” she countered. “I’ll call Panda and tell him a ten-year-old kid broke into his bedroom.”

His golden brown eyes grew indignant. “I’m not ten! I’m twelve.”

“My mistake.”

He shot her a hostile glare and sauntered out of the room before she could figure out how to ask him if he happened to know Panda’s real name. By the time she got to the kitchen, he’d disappeared.



THE UPSTAIRS BEDROOMS HAD SLOPING ceilings, mismatched furniture, and a hodgepodge of old draperies. A large dormitory extended the width of the house, the light seeping through its dusty windows revealing four sets of scarred bunk beds with thin, striped mattresses rolled up at the footboards. Sand from long-ago summers still lodged in some of the floorboard cracks, and she imagined wet bathing suits abandoned wherever they’d been dropped. The house seemed to be waiting for the Remingtons to return from their life in Grand Rapids or Chicago or wherever they came from. What had possessed Panda to buy a place like this? And what possessed her to want to stay?

She carried the coffee she’d made in his fancy machine out the back door into the yard. The morning was sunny and the sky clear. The clean air brought back memories of precious mornings at Camp David, the sight of her sisters chasing one another around the stone pool deck at the Aspen Lodge, her parents setting off on a hike, just the two of them. Here an old oak sheltered a splintered picnic table, and a metal stake waited for a game of horseshoes. She curled her fingers around the coffee mug and breathed in the crisp lake air.