What Dies in Summer by Tom Wright Read Free Book Online Page A

can inherit the earth without any further protest from me.”
    I doubted that Colossians knew much about the smoke or the ovens, but he took off his hat, wiped his head with his bandanna and smiled at us all with a drop of sweat hanging like a jewel from
the end of his nose. “Well, that be all right, I reckon,” he said. “Expect He go on try to keep a good watch on us just the same.”
    But it wasn’t the Lord I saw keeping watch at my bedside again that night. It was the girl who was death.
    Doo-be-doo-be-doo , she sang softly from her cold blue mouth.

 
8 | Times
    THE LAST TIME I ever rode my bicycle was the day I learned something important about what the word home really means. Or maybe what it
doesn’t mean.
    I had been thinking more and more about L.A., trying to make sense of her being here and figure out what had happened to make her leave home. Gram must have wondered too, but I guess we both had
our reasons for not asking. With me it was not wanting to piss L.A. off, along with the absolute certainty that she’d never tell me anything she didn’t want me to know anyway. And even
though I told myself L.A.’s arrival had nothing to do with it, my night visitor had shown up right after L.A. had, and the feeling of connection wouldn’t go away. I finally decided that
if I was ever going to have any peace I needed to know.
    But that’s where I hit the wall. I didn’t think Aunt Rachel or Uncle Cam would tell me anything, at least not anything I could be sure was true. Which didn’t leave many
possibilities. The only source I could think of who might know something and be willing to tell me was Mom, but that didn’t simplify things much because of all the pitfalls talking to her
could involve.
    What finally decided it for me was a miracle. Maybe that isn’t the right word for it, but then I can’t think of a better one. You can judge for yourself.
    The day it happened started with rain, which began coming down in earnest while L.A. and I were having breakfast with Gram at the kitchen table. It was a cornflakes morning, and along with her
cereal, which she was mainly ignoring, L.A. was taking occasional sips of the coffee Gram had fixed for her—half a cup of fresh-brewed Folgers filled the rest of the way up with milk and
sweetened with a spoonful of brown sugar. Like always at this time of day, her eyes were wide and blank and her hair had what Gram called that freshly dynamited look. Jazzy was curled up asleep by
her feet.
    Since the municipal pool was open this morning and it was an Adult Day—which meant they only allowed swimmers old enough for you to have a reasonable hope they wouldn’t pee in the
water—this was supposed to be a swimming day for us. But when I heard the rain and wind and noticed how dark it was getting outside, I was forced to start thinking in terms of fallback plans.
With a frog-strangler like this in the morning, a lot of times it’s just the beginning of a whole day of start-and-stop rain, which would mean the pool would be closed on account of the
possibility of lightning.
    Gram looked out the window for a minute and said, “Now, where was all this last month when we needed it?” She set her coffee cup down in front of her.
    L.A. didn’t speak, just stirred her cereal around, rubbed her nose with the heel of her hand and yawned. She was never in a hurry to eat anything, especially in the morning. On the other
hand, I was into my second bowl of flakes with no loss of momentum as I listened to the rain roar and rattle outside. By now it was almost dark as night out there. I didn’t know why, but I
enjoyed the sound of the rain. Regardless of how bad they could sometimes screw up your plans, I liked rainy days almost as much as rainy nights.
    Then, while I was gazing absentmindedly at something on the back of Gram’s newspaper about a teen reported missing, and just as L.A. was finally getting around to taking a bite of
cornflakes, I noticed out of the