The Story Keeper Read Online Free Page A

dark, then bright, then dark.
    “Oh, come on .” I slipped off the burnt-orange silk coat I loved during the fall months. It would’ve been an indulgence, given the designer label, but it had been a gift from Jamie, a bribe to get me to stand in for a last-minute magazine shoot, in which she promised I would be carrying an umbrella, and no one would know who I was. Please, please, please, I need mid-length darkhair, and skinny legs, and you can have the coat afterward. My short modeling career was worth it. I treasured the coat, partially because the color called up memories of my favorite sugar maple tree growing up, the one I often climbed as a hiding place. The coat was a secret reminder of the Blue Ridge, a small piece that wasn’t painful to relive.
    The overhead fixture clicked softly, teasing me. I tried the switch again. Up. Down. Up. Down. No luck. Finally there was no choice but to surrender and use the ancient gooseneck lamp that had come with the desk. The lamp’s cast-iron base was rusty, and the built-in inkwell was of no use, but I liked it all the same. It hovered like an all-seeing eye and gave the place a feeling of journalistic authenticity. I imagined it hunched above a reporter, monitoring the progress of stories about the spread of Hitler’s forces or the first words spoken on the moon or the sad sight of little John-John Kennedy saluting his father’s coffin.
    Someone’s been messing with things on my desk.
    The thought wound past my momentary romance with the gooseneck lamp. I squinted at the arrangement of things. The next three reads in my queue, which I always stacked and placed just left of center at the end of the day, were dead center now. The pencil I had left lying atop them had rolled onto the desk.
    Who would’ve come in here overnight? Russell, maybe . . . cleaning?
    Nothing else seemed out of place.
    And then I noticed it. Another detail that hadn’t been the same yesterday. A brown craft-paper envelope, the crease along its edge sun-washed white as if it had been sitting long near a window. It rested on the corner of my desk, slightly cockeyed. The department admin hadn’t put any fresh material in my in-box or on the credenza by the door. Had someone left the packet here accidentally while passing through my office? Who? And passingthrough my office for what reason? My little cubby wasn’t on the way to anywhere.
    The envelope was crisp to the touch. The upper corner had been torn off at some time in the past. No return address. Dust clung along the feathered edge so that it drew a jagged brown line against the paper peeking through from beneath. The underlying sheet was aquamarine, a vibrant color beside the brown. The juxtaposition made me stop, admire the random art of everyday life.
    Inside, the small stack of pages had yellowed around the edges, but the aquamarine cover sheet was bright. A handwritten swirl of ink lay just beyond my thumb.
    An odd sixth sense tightened the corridors of curiosity in my brain, brought a wariness that warned me to leave the papers inside. The postmark   —what I could read of it   —said June 7, 1993 .
    Was this thing from George Vida’s famous slush pile? The one nobody was supposed to touch?
    Outside my door, the building was silent, yet I had the eerie feeling of being watched. Leaving the envelope on the desk, I walked down the hall, checking for signs of life in the other offices   —a coat hanging over a chair, a fresh cup of coffee, a pair of comfortable tennis shoes tucked in a corner after a coworker changed into heels.
    Nothing.
    Who would take part of Slush Mountain and leave it in my office? Why?
    A mistake? Hazing the new girl? Or was someone trying to   —I hated to even think it   —set me up? Had I made an enemy here without realizing it? Maybe a colleague was insecure about the new addition to the team? Publishing could be a cutthroat business. . . .
    Was this a test to see if I could be trusted? To see if