Read So Cold the River (2010) for Free Online

swallow and deleted the message.
    “Hate to tell you, Alyssa,” he said aloud, “but those weren’t his last words.”

5
    I T HIT NINETY ON the first Friday of May, and everyone Anne McKinney spoke with commented on the heat, shook their heads, and expressed disbelief.
     Anne, of course, had seen this coming about six weeks earlier, when spring arrived early and emphatically. It had been in
     the high sixties throughout the third week of March, and while the TV people were busy talking about when it would break,
     Anne knew by the fourth day that it would not. Not really, not in the way of a normal Indiana spring, with those wild swings,
     seventy one day and thirty the next.
    No, this year spring settled in and put up its feet, and winter didn’t have much to say about it, just a few overnight grumblings
     of cold rain and wind. There had been five days in the eighties during April, and the rain that came was gentle. Nurturing.
     The entire town was in bloom now, everything lush and green and unpunished. The grounds around the hotel were particularly
     stunning. Always were, of course—full-time landscaperscould do that for you—but Anne had seen eighty-six springs in West Baden, remembered about eighty of those pretty well, and
     this was as beautiful as any of them.
    And as hot.
    She couldn’t avoid the weather conversations even if she’d wanted to; it was her identity in town, the only thing most people
     could think to mention when they saw her. Sometimes the topic came up casually, other times with genuine interest and inquiry,
     and, often enough, with winks and smiles. It amused some people, her fascination with weather, her house on the hill filled
     with barometers and thermometers and surrounded by weather vanes and wind chimes. That was fine by Anne. To each his own,
     as they said. She knew what she was waiting for.
    Truth be told, there were times when she thought she might never see it either. See the real storm, the one she’d been counting
     on since she was a girl. The last few years, maybe she’d let her eye wander a bit, let her interest dim. She still kept the
     daily records, of course, still knew every shift and eddy of the winds, but it was more observation and less expectation.
    But now it was ninety on the first Friday of May, the air so still it was as if the wind had lost its job here, headed elsewhere
     in search of work. The barometer sat at 30.08 and steady, indicating no change soon. Just heat and blue skies and stillness,
     the summer humidity yet to arrive, that ninety more tolerable than it would be in July.
    All peaceful signs really. Anne didn’t believe any of them.
    She went into the West Baden hotel at three and sat in one of the luxurious velvet-covered chairs near the bar and had her
     afternoon cocktail. Brian, the bartender, gave a wink to one of his coworkers when he fixed Anne’s drink, as if she didn’t
     know he put only the barest splash of Tanqueray in the tonic before squeezing the lime. A splash was all she needed these
     days. Hell,she was eighty-six years old. What did the boy think she was coming down here for, to end up three sheets to the wind?
    No, it was the routine. A ritual of thanks more than anything else, an appreciation for continued health, health that she
     couldn’t ask for at this age. She still made it up all those front steps, didn’t use a cane or a walker or a stranger’s arm.
     Walked in under the dome and had herself a seat and a sip. The day she couldn’t do that, well, go ahead and pop the lid on
     the pine box.
    There wasn’t a soul in the world who would understand how it made Anne feel to come in here and see the place alive. The day
     it had finally reopened, she walked into the rotunda beneath that towering dome of glass and burst into tears. Had to sit
     down on a chair and cry, and people just smiled sympathetic-like at her, seeing an old woman having an old woman’s moment.
     They couldn’t understand what it meant,