Free The Summer of Winters by Mark Allan Gunnells Page A

locked, and if anyone knocks, do not answer it. Can I trust you two to stay put and not get into any trouble?”
    Paige rolled her eyes. “God, Mom, we’re not babies.”
    Mrs. Moore ignored her daughter’s sassiness. “Watch some TV or play another game. I’ll be right back.”
    After Mrs. Moore had filled the laundry basket with wet clothes and disappeared out the back door, Paige got up and I was sure she was going to defy her mother and suggest we go outside. Instead, she stood there for a moment, little blossoms of color blooming on her cheeks. “I, um, I have to go to the bathroom. You can go ahead and turn on the TV or get a soda from the kitchen.”
    After I heard the bathroom door close, I got up and headed for the kitchen, but I paused halfway through the dining room that had been converted to a bedroom. Paige had told me that since the house was a two-bedroom, like ours next door, this was where Brody slept. The bed was actually the kind that folded out from a sofa, but from what I’d seen during my two visits, it just always remained out. There was a dresser shoved into the corner, and it was on it that my eyes were fixed.
    Three rows of drawers, three drawers per row. Nine drawers total…nine drawers of potentially hidden secrets. I looked through the kitchen to the back door then glanced toward the bathroom down a short hallway. I certainly had only a few minutes to myself, and it would be taking one hell of a risk, but that didn’t stop my feet from shuffling me along toward the dresser. If either Paige or Mrs. Moore caught me in the act, I’d say I was looking for a piece of the bubblegum Brody bought at Buford Street Sunday. Not a perfect cover story, but it was better than saying I was looking for evidence that he’d raped and murdered a nine year old girl. But what I was really looking for was evidence that he hadn’t . If I could just find that hairclip, I was sure I’d see that it was more orange than pink, shaped like a giraffe instead of a horse, and what I mistook for a brown strand of hair was just a thread. I just needed to find it and be sure.
    I started with the top drawer on the left side, which contained a bunch of underwear. White briefs, Fruit of the Loom. Rummaging around and finding nothing, I moved to the drawer under it, which contained more underwear, these obviously a little older with tiny holes and stains I tried not to focus on too much. The third drawer down was socks. I had just opened the top drawer of the middle row—T-shirts—when from behind me someone said, “What do you think you’re doing?”
    I gasped and spun around, backing up quickly and hitting the drawer with my backside, shoving it halfway back in. Brody was standing there, and I thought distractedly that he must be a ninja to have come in so silently that I never even heard the front door open or his footsteps across the living room. He wore an expression that seemed part bafflement and part rage.
    “I said, what are you doing?”
    I opened my mouth to give the excuse I had concocted earlier, but in my shock and fear it had flown out of my brain, just leaving me with my mouth hanging wide open. I wanted to move, but my legs were rooted to the spot, and my bladder was suddenly achingly full. The moment stretched out like silly putty, and neither of us seemed to be breathing.
    Finally Brody walked slowly across the room, and I flinched as he reached past me to close the drawer the rest of the way. He looked down at me and seemed about to speak when we heard the toilet flush and Paige came out of the bathroom.
    “There you are,” she said to her brother as she came down the hall into the dining room/bedroom. “I think Mom’s on the verge of a conniption fit. You must have applied to every fast food joint and grocery store in town.”
    “Uh, yeah, sorry, I stopped off at Thompson Park and did a little people watching.”
    Thompson Park , I thought. Just full of little kids. Kids like Sarah