Covenant by John Everson Read Free Book Online Page B

worth the effort.
    Spread out before her was a picture postcard. She could never describe this to her friends in college. And pictures couldn’t begin to capture the beauty she’d been brought up to accept as mundane. Straight down, the ocean broke in foamy kisses against the boulder-strewn beach. Sea green beyond the rocks, the water stretched to the horizon, which was already bruising purple with the coming night. Behind her, she could follow the winding road down the slope. It disappeared into a maze of trees, but slithered out the other side and reappeared entering the town proper of Terrel.
    From the top of the cliff she could see the bell tower of St. Matthews, the rust-tiled roof of the Anderson Hotel, and the grassy knoll to the west of town where she and James used to picnic. All around, poking through the canopy of forest were a collage of black and green roofs of the surrounding homes.
    The steady intake and exhalation of the ocean filled the air, but in the distance she could hear the call of gulls. They’d be heading home now, to wherever it is seabirds shelter for the night.
    Cindy walked closer to the edge.
    She could see a spot where the gray rock extended out over the ocean just a few feet farther than the rest of the plateau. He’d jumped there, she decided. They all jumped from there, didn’t they?
    She approached the spot slowly, hesitantly. As if to a shrine.
    Why? What could have possessed him to do it?
    The word “possessed” took root and echoed in her brain.
    She sank to her knees then, and the tears snuck through the dike she’d built against them these past couple hours of walking and thinking.
    Even though James refused to leave Terrel for college, she’d still thought they would be together this summer. And maybe then she could have convinced him to reconsider. She pounded a fist into the denim of her thigh.
    He hadn’t even waited to see her! One more week and she would have been with him. They would have had three more months, if not forever. And maybe those months would have led to the beginning of forever, if things had gone the way she’d hoped. Hadn’t they been in love? Hadn’t she pulled him to her chest under the blanket of night and met his whispered promises with secret words of her own?
    Her heart ached with conflicting emotions. She wanted to hit him for leaving her, and at the same time kiss him and beg him to come back.
    She rocked with sobs on the edge of the cliff, unable to do either.

CHAPTER TEN
    Joe hit c4 and watched the Bugles drop with a gentle thunk to the bottom. He pulled out the bag and was munching contentedly until he got back to his desk.
    Randy was there waiting for him.
    “Where’ve you been?” the night editor demanded. “We’ve got a paper to put out here. I need to get your story on the library renovation—and the fire safety piece—by six o’clock!”
    Shit.
    “I’m sorry, Randy. I was down at the library doing some research. The time got away from me. I’m almost through with both of those anyway. Give me another hour.”
    “Well, get on ’em.”
    Tom Hicks, the slot editor, looked up from the copydesk and winked at him. Then he wrinkled up his face and exaggerated the editor’s tantrum through painful facial grimaces.
    It was all Joe could do to keep from laughing in his boss’s face. Randy turned to go back to his desk, but then stopped.
    “Oh, and I almost forgot. A woman called while you were gone. Italian. Angelina? No, Angelica. That fortune-teller lady from the south end of town. Angelica Napalona. She said you had her number. Why you’d have her number, I don’t want to know. But if you’re thinking about using her as a source for anything that doesn’t involve mental illness, you can pick up your pen and pad and head back to Chicago.”
    “Don’t worry, I just had a question about my palm,” Joequipped, but inside he was jumping. Why was she calling him? Had his presence at the funeral changed her mind?
    He sat down