zhang168

@@@@@It’s
kind of a joke
“You’re making that upEsther – the big one in ’26 – missed Duma
completely, but the Alice in March of ’27 hit it
pretty much dead-onThen it blew inland and
drowned in the GladesIt did the damage you see
in this picture – not much, really; blew down some
palms, knocked out some glass, tore up the lawn
But in another way, its effects are still being
feltBecause it seems pretty certain it was that
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Alice that led to the drowning deaths of Tessie
and Laura, and that led to everything else
Including you and me standing here now
“Remember this?”
He took another photo from his folder, and I
certainly did remember itThe big one was on the
second-floor landing of the main staircaseThis
was a smaller, sharper copyIt was the Eastlake
family, with John Eastlake wearing a black bathing
singlet and looking like a Hollywood B-list actor
who might have specialized in detective movies and
jungle epicsHe was holding ElizabethOne hand
cupped her plump little bottomThe other held
that harpoon pistol, and a face-mask with an
attached snorkel
“Judging just by Elizabeth, I’m going to guess
this might have been taken around 1925,” Wireman
said”She looks two, going on threeAnd Adriana”
- he tapped the eldest – “looks like she might be
seventeen going on thirty-four, wouldn’t you say?”
IndeedSeventeen and ripe, even in her it-coversdamn-
near-everything bathing suit
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“She’s already got that sulky, pouty I-want-to-besomewhere-
else look, too,” Wireman said”I wonder
just how surprised her father was when she up and
eloped with one of his plant managersAnd I
wonder if he wasn’t, in his heart of hearts, glad
to see her go He put on his Chris Shannington
drawl”Run off to Atlanta with a boy in a tie and
an eyeshadeI guessed the
subject of little dead girls, even ones lost
eighty years ago, was still a tender one with him