Free The Hawley Book of the Dead by Chrysler Szarlan Page B

me.
    “Who are you?” I asked impulsively, and she looked as if at any moment she might answer. But of course she didn’t. She was just a painting. It was strange, though, that I hadn’t noticed the portrait just a half hour before, when Carl showed me the house.
    I stepped out into the cooling air and breathed it in. I walked along the roofline of the house, looking over my domain, new and old. The steeple of the church, the slate roofs of the empty houses, the tall, protective wall with its comforting electric wire receding into the woods, the massive gate with the computerized entrance. Even with all the beauty surrounding me I felt forlorn. I had to face the fact that here I was, without Jeremy. I’d made a home without him. As hastily thrown together as the Hawley house was, it was our home now. A home we would never share with him. How final it seemed. I realized, though, that something had altered in me. Under the darkening sky, I felt I could breathe for the first time since Jeremy died, that in this place I could live my life and keep what was left of our family safe. Compared to what I’d had, it wasn’t much. But it was something.
7
    Nathan had uncorked a bottle of wine, and he proposed a toast to happiness in our new home. The girls raised their glasses of sparkling apple cider, giddy in the festive atmosphere Nathan had created with candles and their champagne-like drinks.
    “I have a toast to make, too.” Fai lifted her glass again. “To Mom’s old boyfriend, who I just found!” Her eyes sparkled with delight.
    “Whoa. Wait a minute.” Grace frowned suspiciously. “How do you know it’s him? Mom didn’t even tell us his last name.”
    “Be
cause
,” her twin retorted, drawing out her explanation for the slow-witted among us, “Jolon’s not a common
first
name. There were a lot of entries for other things, like a site in Ireland selling Bibles, a town in California with a headless ghost.”
    “Oooh!” Caleigh squealed. “Tell that one!”
    “Well, sometime in the 1800s, this guy was driving a wagon with his wife and baby through the town of Jolon, going to claim his land. The Indians warned him the river was too high to cross, but he was dumb and tried it anyway. His wife’s head got chopped off, and she haunted the town forever after, looking for her head.”
    “Cool!” Caleigh had a consuming love of ghost stories.
    “But I found Mom’s old Jolon, too. It’s got to be him, or else he’s a performance artist that looks about sixteen in Seattle, or he had a sex change and is a lady realtor in Texas. There were only three actual people with that first name.”
    “Well, where is he then?” My skin stung, hot all over, like a sudden fever had engulfed me.
    “You have to guess!”
    Nathan, looking up from spooning Mrs. Pike’s pot roast, told Fai, “No need to torture your mother,
chère
.”
    “Oh, all right, then. He’s here. In Hawley. He’s the chief of police!”
    “You were right,” Grace begrudged her. “He came back. Not that we care. We don’t need him.”
    I hoped she was right. I hoped we wouldn’t need to have anything to do with the police in Hawley.
    “Is Mom okay?” Caleigh was staring at me.
    “Hey, Mom. You look pale.”
    I felt pale. I felt like all the blood had drained from my body. I looked down at my laden plate, picked up my fork. “Nothing dinner won’t cure,” I asserted, pushing away thoughts of Jolon. I was the mom. It was up to me to keep on, always, in the midst of any storm, in the real world or in my own heart. We bent over our plates to do justice to Mrs. Pike’s pot roast.
    After dinner and a ferocious game of Scrabble, I made the girls turn in early. They clamored for a Revelation story, so I told them about our ancestor who had spied for the patriots during the Revolutionary War. Her power was reading minds. After the story, I settled them, kissed them all good night, and went to my room. I paged through a new cookbook. I like