Free Sink Trap by Christy Evans Page A

the cops—at worst, you’ve only found missing property.” She shrugged.
    “And it does look like she plans to come back,” I agreed. “But I know there’s something wrong. I just don’t know exactly what it is.” I laughed nervously, feeling embarrassed. “Wade did try to warn me about Paula’s stories. He said she would have some tragic tale, and he was right about that.”
    By the time we paid for our lunches and left Franklin’s, we had talked ourselves out of the funk Paula’s story had put us in, though I knew the echoes of it would lurk in the back of my brain.
    I made a quick detour by my house to pick up the dogs before returning to Doggy Day Spa for their appointment. While Sue clipped and bathed, I wandered outside.

    Sue’s shop was on the main street of Pine Ridge. Local businesses lined the street, along with a couple of bank branches and a Radio Shack franchise.
    Dee’s Lunch, its long counter, red vinyl stools, and stoneware mugs a Pine Ridge institution, occupied a narrow store front a few doors down. Dee had closed at two every day for as long as I could remember, and I spotted her locking her door, as I walked along the sidewalk. I waved, and she waved back, her arm thin as a matchstick.
    I crossed the street and followed my nose. The yeasty aroma of fresh-baked bread teased me along, right to the door of Katie’s Bakery. I have a weakness for fresh bread, and I emerged a few minutes later with a sourdough ba guette and a loaf of whole wheat. It would go stale before I could eat it all, but I couldn’t decide which one I wanted, so I bought both.
    I walked a couple more blocks, glancing in store windows, taking stock of what had changed and what had stayed the same. I’d been back in Pine Ridge a couple months, but I had holed up in my rented house and concentrated on putting my life back together. I hadn’t really explored my old hometown, and it was both strange and familiar at the same time.
    I crossed back over, strolling along the sidewalk. The drugstore and the fabric shop were where I remembered them, but there was a vacant store front between them, its window papered over, leaving only a sliver of the room visible.
    I stopped and peered into the narrow gap in the paper, looking for a clue to jog my memory about what had been there.
    The empty space didn’t trigger any memories, but as I stood there, the bread warm under my arm, I did remember something.
    Tuesday afternoons, after school. Tuesday was rye day at the bakery, and it had been my responsibility to
pick up a loaf after school for my father’s ham sandwiches. Dad had loved rye bread, the heavier and darker the better.
    I would come out of the bakery, a loosely wrapped loaf under my arm just as the sourdough was now, feeling the warmth of the freshly baked bread and smelling the caraway seeds.
    There was always a knot of girls across the street, in front of what was now an empty shop.
    Dance students!
    This was where the dance studio had been. Ballet, tap, jazz, and modern; lessons every week for the girls whose parents sent them to learn grace and elegance.
    My mother offered me lessons but I refused to go, preferring to spend my time in the library, or taking things apart to find out how they worked. But I remembered that group of girls in their tights and topknots, clustered on the sidewalk waiting for their rides, and chattering like a flock of exotic birds.
    Even then, standing across the street apart from the chattering dancers, I knew it was hard for my mother to relate to me. My father had understood my need and my ambition. He was the one who encouraged my interest in math, and supported me when I said I wanted to study computer science at one of the best—and most expensive—schools in the country.
    But Mom never quite got it.
    Now, I looked at that empty space and wondered what had happened to all those other girls. Most, I suspected, had married local boys and still lived near Pine Ridge. They probably