Read So Cold the River (2010) for Free Online Page A

couldn’t understand the way this place had looked when she was a girl, the most amazing
     place she could ever have imagined in the world.
    It had been mostly a ruin for years. Decades. She’d come and gone through the town daily, looking up to see the crumbling
     stone and cracked marble, and with every day and every look, a little piece of her died a wailing, anguished death.
    But she’d never lost hope either. The place was special, and she just couldn’t imagine that it would go on like that forever.
     The hotel’s return, much like the big storm, was something she’d believed in without fail. You called that sort of thing faith.
    Her faith had been rewarded. Bill Cook, the man’s name. Awful plain name, she thought, but he’d made a few billion dollars
     on it with a medical company up in Bloomington, and then he’d found his way down here and not only seen what had to be done
     but could afford to
have
it done.
    So now they were back, both of them, the West Baden Springs Hotel and the French Lick Springs Resort, buildings that seemedas out of place in this valley as a pair of giraffes at a dog show, and though she had no use for the ugly fake riverboat
     casino that was built to draw people down, she understood its purpose. Most irksome part of that was that the thing wasn’t
     really a riverboat, was nothing but a building with a moat around it, but evidently that was enough to please the legislators,
     who wouldn’t allow anything but riverboat casinos in the state. You had to wonder what that said about the quality of brains
     in the statehouse, that they could fool themselves into thinking a building was a boat just because you filled a ditch around
     it with water, but Anne had been around for too many years to hold much hope for government anyhow. They could have declared
     the thing a spaceship for all she cared as long as it allowed the hotels to come back.
    She’d lived to see it. That was a special thing, and one that returned her faith in the storm. It was coming, someday, a dark,
     furious cloud, and though she didn’t know what role she would play in that, she knew it was important that she be ready. Part
     of her wanted the storm; part of her dreaded it. As much as she loved them—those brilliant flashes of lightning, the terrible
     screaming winds—she feared them, too. They took all the powers of man and sneered at them.
    A convention of some sort was in the hotel today, and the place was particularly active, echoing with voices and laughter
     and footfalls on the parquet. It soothed her like a hand on the shoulder. She asked Brian for one more, smiled to herself
     as she saw him fill the short glass with nothing but tonic and ice before adding the lime. He knew the rules. Anne was here
     for the sounds and the sights, not the sauce.
    She took the tonic in slow, and by the time it was gone, that comforting noise and bustle and the soft velvet armchair were
     pulling her down to sleep, and she knew it was time to go. Start falling asleep down here and she’d begin to seem less charmingto the staff. Right now, with her daily gin and her smiles and occasional barbed jokes, she was something of a local treasure.
     Valued, appreciated, even by the younger ones. She liked that role, and understood all too well that it could quickly be erased
     by one drooling nap.
    She got to her feet, taking care to relish that tug of pain in her lower back, a tug that she wouldn’t have if she couldn’t
     still get to her feet. Left a few dollars for Brian—
Thank you, Mrs. McKinney, have a good day and we’ll see you tomorrow
—and walked away from the bar and back into the rotunda. Stood in the middle and looked up at the dome, with the sun shining
     down and the place glittering, took a deep breath, and thanked the good Lord for one more afternoon like this. Precious things.
     Precious.
    Out the main doors and back onto the steps and what do you know—there was some wind to greet her. First she’d