Free Ghost Roll by Julia Keller

support for each other that didn’t require words. Just a steady accumulation of days in each other’s company.
    â€œOne more thing,” he said.
    Here it comes, she thought. Now he’d say something heartfelt, something about how he, too, remembered their daily interactions back in Acker’s Gap, and missed the camaraderie of a shared purpose. Missed, even, the impossible hours and the constant frustrations.
    â€œNo charge for the paper clip,” he said.
    She gave him a brief wave to acknowledge the levity.
    The front part of the store, when she rounded the corner and returned to it, was a different place now, with all three cash registers going full tilt, with lines of customers snaking around the racks and bins, waiting to pay for gas and gum and coffee and lottery tickets and peanuts and candy bars and sunglasses and cigarettes. Bell moved in a haze, preoccupied by her memories of previous mornings with Nick Fogelsong, work mornings, mornings when they’d felt the weight of the world but never really minded it because each had the other one right there, ready to take up the slack when one of them grew weary. The past was a tricky bastard. It called and called to you—and when you turned around and tried to grasp it, it disappeared.
    Reaching the double glass doors, she took a quick look back at the busy store. She was mildly surprised to see the fat man—the one who’d walked in just ahead of her, the one in the green plaid coat and the cap with the oval Peterbilt logo—still on the premises. Must be stocking up. He stood at the start of the soft drink aisle, shoulders hunched, hands in his pockets, apparently torn by an existential dilemma regarding two-liter plastic jugs of Dr Pepper: diet or regular? The only visible motion came from his jaw, as it grappled with a bountiful plug of snuff, and his eyes, which roved restlessly.

 
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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
    GHOST ROLL . Copyright © 2015 by Julia Keller. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
    www.minotaurbooks.com
    Cover design by Crystal Ben
    Cover photographs: figure © Miha Pavlin/Getty Images; background © Wing Yin Chan/ Getty Images; playground © Brooks Elliott/ Getty Images
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    e-ISBN 9781466857032
    First Edition: June 2015