Free The Heavens Rise by Christopher Rice

you’re afraid of them . But Peyton’s widowhood had included several dalliances with black men. Also, after a second or two of awkward silence, it became clear to everyone that Marissa Hopewell wasn’t a stranger to her at all.
    “I read your columns!” his mother cried.
    “Thank you.”
    “You’re wrong most of the time, but I read you anyway.”
    “Well, good. That’s what they’re for.”
    “So why are you—” Peyton turned and gave her son a look. Then pivoted toward Marissa, one hand going up as if to ward off an offer of Girl Scout cookies. “Oh, no, no, no. No interviews. Nah uh. No way!”
    “Uhm, actually, Mrs. Broyard, your son came to interview me earlier today.”
    “I see,” Peyton said. “So we didn’t do more flyering, did we?”
    “I didn’t say we did,” Ben answered.
    “You didn’t say you didn’t either.”
    “Hey. Can we do this all night?” Ben suggested. “It’ll be awesome!”
    To Marissa, Peyton said, “Are you here to sue us?”
    “Well, your son is a very articulate young man. I’ll say that much.”
    “My son is a verbal terrorist who doesn’t believe in personal boundaries.” Peyton’s stage whisper must have been for effect because Ben heard every word.
    “I see . . .” Marissa answered, searching Ben’s face. The woman was probably trying to figure out if Ben had been wounded by his mother’s description, or if the two of them always sparred like this. Ben rolled his eyes to let her know it was the latter. “You know what they say. One man’s terrorist is another man’s—”
    “Journalist?” Ben finished for her.
    “Who says that?” Peyton asked. “No one says that.”
    Then she saw the two of them smiling at each other and realized it was a joke. “All right, well, come on in. Since you seem to be friends and all. Just think twice before you give this one a platform, okay? He’s loud enough already.”
    •   •   •
    A few minutes later, Ben and Marissa were outside in the backyard, seated at a wrought-iron patio table blanketed by the deepening shadowscast by the oak tree overhead. The yard was sandbox size and it always felt to Ben like the oak was going to literally take it over one day. His mother had worked hard to cover the fences with walls of bougainvillea, and a moss-dappled cherub sat on a lone stone bench at the very rear of the garden.
    Peyton brought them both glasses of iced tea. Then she departed with a bright smile, relieved that her son was someone else’s worry, if only for the next few minutes or so.
    “Were you pulling my leg when you said you went to every hardware store in Orleans Parish to find that bulb?” Marissa finally asked.
    “Which bulb?”
    “The one that killed those birds at your school.”
    “The one Marshall used to kill those birds? No. I wasn’t pulling your leg.”
    “Jesus . . . Do you ever actually go to school?”
    “I’m a second-semester senior and I was already accepted to Tulane. I don’t really need to go to school.”
    “Well, there’s always the whole learning aspect, especially if you want to go into journalism.”
    “Who said I wanted to go into journalism?”
    “You did, when you went around acting like a reporter.”
    “I’m working on a novel.”
    “Don’t bother. There’re too many already and not enough people to read them.”
    “ Seriously? You realize you said that out loud, right?”
    Her arch smile told him she didn’t care. She seemed utterly at ease in his presence despite their brief, tempestuous history together; when she took a sip of iced tea and brushed her free-form dreadlocks back from her brow, she did so with hands that were still and controlled, unlike his own. He envied her stillness, her maturity. Her poise.
    “You know,” she said, “I recognized you today. From the news.That’s how I found out who you were. You’re one of Niquette Delongpre’s friends. That’s what the flyers are about, right?”
    “We’re done with the