The Girl On Legare Street (36 page)

I saw the alarm in his eyes and knew that I had him. I zeroed in for the kill. “So, what’s wrong with the house now?”

Without looking at Sophie, he said, “There’s a pretty thick crack in the bricks on the back of the house and Soph thinks there might be something wrong with the foundation.”

I stared at him and blinked soundlessly for a good minute, having absolutely nothing to say. They all began talking at once, but I held up my hand. “I’m going upstairs to change, and I might even lie down a bit. I need a little time to recover first before I can listen to any more.”

I’d barely taken a step toward the staircase when the knocker sounded from the front door. When nobody else moved, I made my way to the door and pulled it open.

Amelia and John Trenholm, Jack’s parents, stood on the piazza, looking uncertain and trying to see past my shoulder. Amelia smiled tentatively. “Hello, Melanie. I’m glad to see you looking so well. Is Jack here? We’ve been trying to find him, but he’s not at home and he’s not answering his cell. We were driving by and saw his car outside.”

I pulled back, opening the door wider, just as I caught sight of the third person standing on the piazza with them. She was a young girl of about twelve or thirteen years old. She wore platform shoes, low-rider jeans, halter top, heavy blue eye shadow, and was at that moment sticking a wad of bright pink bubble gum on one of the front columns of my house.

She turned to me and smiled and my eyes widened. The girl had black wavy hair and dark blue eyes, but it was the dimple in her left cheek that gave her away.

“Jack,” I said slowly. “You might want to come out here.”

He came to stand next to me and had opened his mouth to say something when he caught sight of the girl and stopped.

Her grin widened when she saw him, and I knew the effect wasn’t lost on him, either.

“Hello, Daddy,” she said, leaning nonchalantly on the railing. “Surprise.”

I looked from the girl’s multipierced ears to Jack’s astonished face and suddenly having a cracked foundation didn’t seem like such a big problem after all.

“I’ll let you talk in private,” I said before sweeping back into the front hall of my Tradd Street house, smelling the scents of varnished wood and new paint that reminded me I was home, then closed the door behind me.

Karen White
is the award-winning author of eleven previous books, including the first in this series,
The House on Tradd Street
. She grew up in London but now lives with her husband and two children near Atlanta, Georgia. Visit her Web site at
www.karen-white.com
.