Free Swallowing Stones by Joyce McDonald Page B

so startling that Jenna could only close her eyes and press her lips tightly together. And for one agonizing moment the cry felt as if it were coming from her own body.
    When she opened her eyes, she saw her mother standing with her forehead against the refrigerator door, her hand still on the list, shaking with convulsive sobs. Jenna put her arms around her and led her to a chair.
    Then, because she needed to be doing something, she poured two glasses of iced tea and set one in front of her mother along with a box of Kleenex.
    Meredith had stopped crying. She grabbed a handful of tissues and blew her nose. “It’s strange, isn’t it? That list has been there for weeks. I’ve been in and out of the refrigerator a hundred times since that day, but I never even noticed. Then, suddenly, there it is, staring me right in the face.”
    Jenna wished she had thrown the list away that same morning she had crossed off the first chore. “I’ll clean off the fridge for you, okay? There’s a lot of old junk stuck up there.”
    “Sometimes these things just catch me off guard.” Her mother wiped her eyes with the wad of tissues. “The other day I was rummaging in the medicine cabinet for the Visine—I hate going around with my eyes all red—and there was this stuff that was supposed to make his hair grow … he was so worriedabout losing his hair. I just stood there holding that bottle, and suddenly I burst into tears.”
    Jenna shifted uneasily in her chair.
    “I guess that phone call this afternoon set me off,” her mother said.
    “What phone call?”
    Her mother didn’t answer. Instead she reached for another handful of tissues. Then she picked up her glass of iced tea, lifted it in the direction of the sliding glass doors that led to the deck, and said, “Let’s go outside for a while, okay? We need to talk.”
    Jenna glanced at the clock. It was only five-thirty. There would still be enough time to eat and take a shower before Jason came. But something in the way her mother had said “We need to talk” had put her on guard. In the days before her father’s death, that usually meant Jenna was in some kind of trouble.
    Still, her instincts told her this was far more serious. So she followed her mother onto the deck and sat across from her. Her suspicions were confirmed when her mother leaned forward, gently rested her hand on Jenna’s arm, and said that Chief Zelenski had called her at work that afternoon.

8
    e very muscle in Jenna’s body felt cemented in place. She did not dare move or breathe. Had the police found her father’s killer? For whenever she tried to picture the person behind that lethal trigger, she could only think of him as a murderer. A cold-blooded killer. It did not matter that the shooting had been an accident. It would never matter. “Well, what did he say? Did they find the person who did it?”
    Her mother shook her head. “No. But he says the ballistics team traced the path of the bullet to within a four-block area.”
    Four blocks. Somewhere within a mere four blocks the killer might be sitting in his home. Maybe watching television, or eating dinner. Normal stuff. Jenna noticed her hands had begun to shake, and she set her glass of iced tea on the arm of the chair. “So now what?”
    “Well, Dave says the local police have been going door-to-door asking questions. They’re trying to find out who has a gun that matches the bullet.”
    An aborted laugh stuck in Jenna’s throat. “You’re serious, right? They really think, with all the publicity about the accident, that anybody’s going to admit they even own a gun?”
    Her mother unwrapped the towel from her head, wipedher swollen eyes with it, then began to rub her wet hair. “They have records,” she said. “Handguns have to be registered. They know who owns what.”
    “What if it wasn’t a handgun?”
    Her mother’s eyes met hers, and Jenna could almost feel her disappointment. “You mean maybe it was a