Five Minutes More Read Online Free Page A

trash. “Take a break, okay?”
    â€œI just want to get the kitchen cleaned up.”
    â€œI’ll do it.”
    â€œAll right. All right. I don’t want to argue.” She sits, slumping against the chair back.
    â€œWhere’s Claire?” I ask.
    Mom rests one elbow on the table and pulls her fingers through her hair. I notice how thin her face seems, how her cheekbones—which I didn’t inherit and have always longed for—seem about to poke through the skin. “She’s lying down.”
    She looks at me as though she expects me to say something. I bite my tongue. Literally. Claire will be gone tomorrow anyway.
    I finish stacking the dishes and cram the last of the garbage into the bag. Then I make peppermint tea. While it steeps, I wash and dry a cup. I can feel my mother’s eyes on me.
    â€œWhat about you, D’Arcy? Are you all right?” she asks.
    â€œI’m okay,” I say as I hand her the tea. Another half lie, if anyone’s counting. She presses both hands around the cup as though she’s trying to draw its heat into her fingers. Her whole body seems to sag over the table.
    I turn back to the sink. “Where’s the car?” I ask.
    â€œIt’s still across the street in the Keefers’ driveway. I’ll go get it in a minute.”
    â€œNo.” I have to stop and swallow because the words suddenly stick in my throat. “I mean Dad’s car. Where is it?”
    â€œThe police still have it.”
    Keep going
. “So they’re still...investigating?”
    â€œYes...” She pulls a hand back through her hair. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
    I keep rinsing cups under the hot water. “I think it was an accident. I really do.”
    It’s a long time before my mother says anything. “Sometimes you don’t get the answers you’re looking for,” she says. She gets up, comes behind me and squeezes my shoulders. “I’m sorry. Sometimes there aren’t any answers.”

    The door to Claire’s room is open. I catch sight of a photograph lying on the end of the bed. Water’s running in the bathroom. One step and suddenly, somehow, I’m in the room.
    In the picture a little blond girl is riding on the shoulders of a man. There’s ice cream or something all over her face. They’re both laughing, heads together, squinting into the sun as the wind blows their hair.
    My father. And Claire.
    I look at the picture again. They look...happy. I never really thought about my dad being happy in another life. I never thought about him playing with Claire, carryingher on his shoulders. I never really thought of Claire as a little girl.
    Something squirms inside me. I drop the picture back on the bed, slip into the hall and go to my own room.

seven
    12:26.
    I can’t sleep. The streetlight shines through the window, outlining the panes on the floor in weird, orange-pink light, like some special effect in a horror movie.
    I roll over onto my back and listen to the creaks and snaps the house makes as it settles down for the night.
    I was seven when we moved here. Back then the whole house scared me. It seemed so old, full of groans and squeaks and other strange noises. In the living room the wall-paper had come loose in long strips that always seemed to be moving, reaching out for me. Chunks of plaster would suddenly drop from the ceilings. And the backyard was an overgrown hunting ground for the neighborhood cats. But Dad turned fixing up this place into an adventure. He’d tell me stories about a mouse named Xavier who’d been packed by mistake in a tea chest and ended up at our house.
    12:36.
    I still can’t sleep. My mind refuses to shut off. It keeps going places I have to pull it back from. I take slow deep breaths, trying to trick my brain into dozing off.
    12:43.
    If I take any more deep breaths I’m going to pass out. My stomach makes a sound like