Emily Kenyon 01 - A Cold Dark Place

interior. “I’m thinking pizza.”
    Of course she really wasn’t. She was thinking of the tornado and its aftermath. Twisters were rare occurrences in Washington state. Only a handful of damaging storms had been recorded there; the worst had been one that killed eleven people near Walla Walla in 1952. The twister that came to Cherrystone on Saturday had howled in the darkness and snatched up all in its wake. Houses and cars were shredded in a giant steel-toothed blender. A dairy near the junction of Wayne Road and U. S. 91 had been so pulverized that a magnifying glass was needed to determine what color the barn paint had been before the storm. The Cherrystone Granary was flattened, which meant already scarce jobs instantly had become even more limited. Five trucks, carefully parked in a row after the shift change, had been tossed to their absolute ruin. Power lines snapped like frayed jute. A semi was lifted more than a hundred yards and slammed into a hillside.
    Emily tilted her head backward; hot water beyond a temperature most could endure flowed over her body, sending the stress of the freak storm, and the worries of a long day, down the drain. Stepping from the shower, Emily wrapped a thick cotton towel around her body. She bent over, wrapped a second one around her head, then flipped her hair back. She called once more to Jenna.
    “You never answered, honey. Is Pietro’s all right?”
    Again, silence.
    Steam swirled and Emily flipped on the bathroom fan. A moment later, she slipped on a terry robe and padded down the hall to Jenna’s room-a space that had been her own bedroom when she was a girl. A rectangle of yellowed glue on the door revealed the spot were she’d once put up a “NO BOYS ALLOWED” sign to keep her little brother, Kevin, at bay. With each step, a memory. Through a knife-slit of light in the doorway, she could see Jenna typing out a message on her silvery Apple iBook computer. Jenna was a little small for her age. Her stature didn’t diminish her; it only made her stand out. Long hair like her mother’s framed her delicate heart-shaped face. Her eyes were blue, the cool color of the Pacific. She tapped on the keyboard with frosted pink fingernails, chipped and ready for another mother/daughter manicure session in front of one of the Law and Orders on TV
    Emily pushed open the door, startling Jenna, who looked up with a frozen smile.
    “Oh, Mom, I didn’t hear you” She closed the chat window and swung around to face her mother.
    “Are you up to no good?” Emily asked, allowing a smile to come to her lips. Deep down, the very idea of her daughter chatting with anyone was more than she could take. She’d seen the way perverts worked the keyboards of personal computers and stalked their prey-unsuspecting children in seemingly safe and cozy homes all across America.
    “Just talking with Shali,” she said. “And yes, we were up to no good. There’s a nice guy who wants to meet us at the Spokane Valley Mall next weekend. He says he looks like Justin Timberlake and Jude Law. Combined.”
    Emily sat on the edge of the bed, smoothing out the sateen spread.
    “He does, does he?” She knew when her daughter was pulling her leg and she started to play along. “Maybe I could meet him, too?”
    Jenna shook her head. “Sorry, Mom, but you’re too old for him. Shali and I are probably too old for him. He seemed to lose interest when we said we were old enough to drive.”
    “That’s not funny”
    “Sick, I know.”
    “You know how I worry.”
    “And you know that you don’t have to worry about me. I know the drill. I don’t make mistakes. My mom is a cop, you know.”
    “So I’ve heard” Emily removed the towel from her head and shook out her hair. “I’m not going to dry this mess. Let’s get out of here and eat. I’m beat”
    Jenna grinned. “Okay. Jude Timberlake can wait.”
    With that, Emily returned to her bedroom, where she put on a pair of faded jeans and a cream-colored boatneck sweater. She looked in the mirror and gave herself a once-over.
    “Not bad for almost forty,” she said, loud enough for Jenna to hear, which, of course, she did. “Maybe this Jude Law lookalike of Jenna’s would be interested in an old chick like me”
    Jenna appeared in the doorway and put her hands on her hips.
    “You’re disgusting,” she said, a smile widening on her pretty face. “Shali and I had him first”
    Monday, 7:16 EM.
    Twenty minutes later they were sitting in a