Shallow Graves by Kali Wallace Read Free Book Online

desperately yellow, weathered, as badly in need offresh paint as the church. The windows on its upper stories looked toward the road like twin rows of eyes. Small purple flowers poked out of the wood-chip mulch in front of the porch.
    â€œOh,” I said. I swallowed and rubbed my palms over my knees. “It looks nice.”
    It was anything but nice. It was bleak and cold and unwelcoming. It was the ugliest shade of yellow I had ever seen.
    There was nothing nearby. No other houses, no farm buildings. I couldn’t even remember when Helen and I had last passed another car on the road. My heart was thudding and I felt a nervous twist in my gut. I wanted to tell Helen to turn the car around and take me away.
    She parked in front of the house, but she didn’t turn off the engine. “This is the place. They’re expecting you.”
    I hesitated before putting my hand on the door handle. “It’s kind of in the middle of nowhere, isn’t it?”
    â€œRight in the heart of God’s country.” Helen’s smile was brief and watery. “Go on. No need to be shy.”
    I forced myself to return to smile and thanked her for the ride. I ducked into the rain and jogged to the front porch of the house.
    As I climbed the porch steps, the door opened.
    â€œThere you are!”
    The girl in the doorway wore a long flower-print dress with an old-fashioned lace collar, and her red hair was split into twin braids over her shoulders. She could have been cosplaying Little House on the Prairie , but I had a feeling this wasn’t dress-up. She was in her twenties, fresh faced and pretty in a forgettable way, except for herastonishing green eyes. The color was so startling I wondered if it might be contacts.
    â€œHi,” I said. Behind me Helen was already leaving. I fought the urge to run after her.
    â€œYou must be Katie,” the girl said. She waved at Helen, received a brief horn tap in response. “Pastor Willow said you were on your way. Lunch is just about ready.”
    Then she smiled, and I nearly missed the last step.
    I recognized her. I had seen that smile before.
    My mind flicked through school and camp and summer, but nothing fit. I knew I had seen her before, that smile and that pretty red hair, the freckles across her nose and those green eyes, but I couldn’t remember when or where.
    â€œYeah, I’m Katie,” I said. For the first time since I had left Evanston, I felt guilty about lying to a stranger.
    â€œI’m Violet,” she said. She stepped aside to let me in. “I hope you like potato and cheese soup. I know it’s more of a winter food, but it’s so gloomy today I thought it was right. Come on in.”
    The front hall of the house was just as virulently yellow as the outside. The walls were papered with an alarmingly cheerful sunflower pattern, and an array of photographs in white frames marched in neat lines down the hallway and up the stairs. There were dozens of photos, more than I could count.
    â€œThose are all the people Mr. Willow has helped,” Violet said. “We keep the pictures around to remind ourselves how important our work is.”
    â€œWow. There are a lot of them,” I said.
    Some of the photographs were old, with faded colors and fashions right out of the seventies or eighties, but most were more recent. They were all posed portraits of men and women looking toward the camera, but rarely directly at it, distracted, their minds elsewhere in spite of the photographer’s best efforts. Some were smiling vacantly; most weren’t.
    â€œMr. Willow has been helping people for a long time,” Violet said. “That’s him and his father.”
    She pointed to a photograph of a broad, unsmiling bear of man in a winter coat, standing beside a much skinnier teenage boy in corduroy and a patterned button-down, with a tragic bowl haircut and a vague frown.
    â€œHis father founded our