Shallow Graves by Kali Wallace Read Free Book Online Page A

congregation,” she explained. “It’s a very sad story, but Mr. Willow always says that adversity is an opportunity for us to learn our true strength.”
    The men in the photo weren’t touching. They didn’t look much like father and son. In the corner somebody had written the date: 1973.
    â€œWhat happened?” I asked.
    Violet’s smile softened. She wasn’t a killer. She had no shadows clinging to her. Her smile was so light, her expression so kind, I wondered if they would even dare. “It’s better that he tells you. Do you want to get cleaned up before lunch?”
    â€œI guess I should. Do I really look that bad?”
    â€œYou can do laundry too,” she said with a laugh. “I have someclean clothes you can borrow. I’m glad you’re here. It’s been so quiet this week. Usually there are a lot more of us. Oh, here’s Esme. Say hi, Esme.”
    In the front room there was a woman sitting in a wheelchair with a blanket folded over her knees. Her face was slack and she was thin in a wasted, unhealthy way, and she had a faint scar stretching from the corner of her eye down to her chin. Her shoulders hunched under a threadbare bathrobe and her hands were clenched on the arms of the chair. There was a towel tucked into the collar of her shirt; somebody had covered her up to help her eat but had forgotten to take it away when they were done.
    The woman turned her head when Violet said her name. She stared at me, her wide brown eyes unblinking, until I looked away.
    â€œShe’s a little shy,” Violet said, and she smiled again, that same friendly smile, and I remembered where I had seen her before.
    Not in person. We had never met.
    But I had seen her face and her smile, and I had heard her voice.
    That’s what I remembered most clearly: the sound of her voice when she screamed.

ELEVEN
    EVERY YEAR SINCE first grade, Diane Fordham invited a group of us over for her birthday party at the end of the summer, and every year I went to her big white house with a gift in hand. The inside of the house was just as white as the outside: white sofas, white carpet, white walls, white artwork in white frames. The only thing in the living room that wasn’t white was the cross on the wall, about six inches long, plain polished wood hanging above the white fireplace.
    I hated walking through that living room to the stairs. I worried I would leave tracks on the carpet and Diane’s mother and father—a tall stern couple who worked for an investment firm—would look down their thin noses and scold me for bringing dirt into theirhome. It felt like a test, crossing that white living room, and I never exhaled until I reached the stairs and the relative safety of Diane’s second floor family room. All through the night we would make excursions to the kitchen for snacks and soda, to the front door when we ordered pizza, but we were always quick, always careful, and every single time Diane said, “Don’t spill anything.” Every time. She had been hearing it her entire life; she blurted it out without thinking.
    It was fun when we were little, that yearly sleepover with so little supervision, but Diane and I grew apart as we grew older, and her birthday party became a tiresome obligation. The rest of us changed, started caring more about sports and boys and music and college and the future, but Diane was still Diane, with her bedroom of girly ruffles and lace in that albino mausoleum of a house.
    The August before our sophomore year of high school, the invitation came like it always had: a pink card in a square pink envelope, my name and address written in Diane’s curling cursive. My mother had left it on my bed with a copy of Scientific American and another letter in a regular white envelope. I recognized the handwriting on that one too. I set it aside without opening it. I already had a collection of Ricky Benning’s awkward notes