Help for the Haunted
Page 44
“But won’t you be up all night?”
“Nope.”
They don’t say anything after that. She gets a can of Diet Coke from her stash in the fridge and a bag of Doritos from the cabinet, then sits on the wooden stool by the chopping block and chews. Loudly. As Philip pours water into the machine, he thinks back to the last time Melissa Moody came for a visit. The summer after Ronnie died, she stopped by unannounced. His mother had been upstairs staring at her bedroom ceiling, his father puttering around his study, pretending to read one of his medical books. Philip had to put aside the assignment he was working on for his poetry class at the Community College of Philadelphia and drag them to the family room, where they sat, staring at this blond, brokenhearted girl covered in bandages until finally, his father walked her to the door and told her good-bye.
Now, as the coffee machine starts to gurgle and spit steam, white lights fill the room from the window. A car door slams in the driveway. Philip’s heart begins to beat hard and fast, just like it used to those nights in New York. He places his hand against his chest, then absently traces his fingers up to that wound beneath the turtleneck as he follows his mother to the foyer. To each side of the thick paneled door is a narrow slit of glass. She presses her face to the one on the right and broadcasts in a how-dare-she tone of voice, “She’s pregnant. I can’t believe it. The girl is pregnant.”
Also by John Searles
Boy Still Missing
Strange but True
Credits
Cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
Cover photograph © by Jennifer Short/Trevillion Images
Copyright
“Little Things” from The Gold Cell by Sharon Olds, copyright © 1987 by Sharon Olds. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. Any third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited. Interested parties must apply directly to Random House, Inc., for permission.
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
P.S.™ is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers.
HELP FOR THE HAUNTED. Copyright © 2013 by John Searles. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
A hardcover edition of this book was published in 2013 by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
FIRST WILLIAM MORROW PAPERBACK EDITION PUBLISHED 2014
ISBN 978-0-06-077963-4
Epub Edition JULY 2014 ISBN: 9780062199430
14 15 16 17 18 OV/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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