Chapters (42)
- Title Page
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Acknowledgements
- Also by Kim Harrison
- Copyright
- About the Publisher
- Cover
Gone, not prison. I appreciated that. Brushing crumbs from myself, I reached for the last half of my sandwich. Ivy was silent, then, “Are you going to open it?”
I smiled, my mouth full as I wiggled my fingers. She was worse than Jenks.
Ivy got to her feet with unusual quickness, and I set the last half of my sandwich back down to pull my knee up as tight as I could comfortably get it. A muffled masculine argument filtered through the wall, and we ignored it as Ivy sat close, like it was Christmas.
The box was light and kind of dusty, as if it had gone from my mom’s attic, to the moving van going out west, and then right back in a mail truck to me. The last two boxes had been the same way. “I really doubt it’s more Nancy Drew,” I told her as I took the knife she handed me. Good grief, she’d brought a knife in for the tape.
“It might be,” Ivy said. “Volume fifty-two is missing.”
Oh, my God. Ivy is a closet Nancy Drew fan! Those books hadn’t gone to the brat pack—they were probably under her bed! Amused, I set the knife on the dresser table and smiled at her eager expression. Her hands were carefully in her lap, anxious. I could have teased her about it, but seeing any happy emotion on her was precious. She actually sighed when I opened up the box and leaned to look in.
“It’s my camp stuff!” I exclaimed, taking out my mom’s handwritten note to see the accumulated bric-a-brac underneath.
“Oh look!” Ivy said brightly. “There is a book!”
My gaze lifted from my mom’s letter, and I smirked at her as she reached for Nancy Drew, volume 52. “You opened it up already, didn’t you!”
Ivy wouldn’t look at me. “Don’t be ridiculous. Why would I open your mail?”
“Mmmm-hmmm.” HI, RACHEL, I read as she flipped through the dog-eared pages as if it were a lost book from the Bible. I FOUND THIS WHILE MOVING IN WITH DONALD. IT WAS EITHER THROW IT AWAY OR SEND IT TO YOU. MISS YOU, MOM.
Setting the letter aside, I smiled. Most of what she’d been sending me had been junk, but this … I gazed into the box. Okay, this was junk, too, but it was my junk.
“Look at this,” I said, bringing out a lopsided clay bowl painted in garish colors. “I made this for my dad. It’s a pipe holder.”
Ivy looked up from the book. “If you say so.”