Centralia Read Free Page B

tried to swallow, but there was no saliva in his mouth. “What’s happened to them?”
    “Pete, they’re dead. They’ve been gone almost two months now. Don’t you remember?”

Catching memories can sometimes be as difficult as catching raindrops. A memory was there for just an instant, but as quickly as it came, it slipped through his fingers. A funeral outside, the sky overcast and ridged with thick clouds as though the world had been turned upside down so a field freshly plowed now formed the canopy above and the ground on which they stood was made of unstable clouds.
    As numb as if his blood had suddenly turned to ice water, Peter forced his brain to engage and fumbled for words. “I . . . uh, I . . .”
    “Pete.” It was Rick again. He sounded confused and concerned. “You okay, man? You need help? You need me to come over?”
    “No.” He rubbed his eyes, scanned the room for any sign of Karen or Lilly, any evidence that they’d been there this morning.Any proof of their existence. Crumbs on the counter, trash in the wastebasket, a dirty dish in the sink. Anything. But there was nothing. It was like they’d never set foot in the house, never walked from room to room, never made a mess, never used anything. Never lived. “No, I’m fine, Rick.”
    “You sure? You don’t sound fine.”
    The last thing Peter needed right now was Rick Greer coming over and talking holes in his head. Rick was a financial counselor. He spent his days staring at numbers and helping people balance their checkbooks. So when he got out from under his calculator, he didn’t know when to give his mouth a rest. He was a nice enough guy, but the relationship was between Karen and Sue, not Peter and Rick.
    “Yeah, uh, I’m okay. Just had a bad dream and . . . forgot for a moment.”
    “Hey, it happens, you know? You’re grieving; you’re still trying to come to terms with your loss, make sense of it. You know?”
    So he was using his counseling wisdom on Peter. “Yeah. You’re right. Hey, listen, sorry to bother you. I hope I didn’t scare Sue. Man, this is embarrassing.”
    “No, no. Don’t worry about that. No harm done here. Totally understandable.” There was a pause again. The background was noiseless now. “Pete, if you ever want to, you know, talk about this, I’m here, okay? I think I can offer you some advice to help you through it, but I don’t want to push. Just say the word and I’m there.”
    Peter knew Rick meant well, but he was in no mood to be questioned and counseled like one of Rick’s financially challenged clients who’d gotten themselves buried in too much debt. “Thanks, Rick. Hey, sorry again. I’m okay. Really. I’ll see you sometime.”
    He clicked off the phone and let it slip from his hand and fall to the counter. Again a memory was there, dropped out of nowhere. They’d been killed in a car accident. It was a Friday morning. Overcast and dreary. A light rain had fallen since darkness crept in the previous night. The report said Karen had somehow lost control and the car had run off the road, hit a tree, and rolled into a ditch. A fuel line ruptured, ignited. The car became an inferno.
    Peter had just gotten to the lab at the university when Dean Chaplin stopped by and told him there had been an accident. Chaplin’s watery eyes couldn’t hide the truth, and immediately Peter knew it was Karen and Lilly, that fate had reached a bony finger from the dark side of reality and poked them.
    And then the memory evaporated and was gone as quickly as it had arrived.
    Peter dropped his head into his hands and tried to remember more, to recall the funeral. It had to have been at the church. Reverend Morsey had to have been the one who presided over it. Friends would have been there, colleagues from the university too. There would have been a viewing and memorial, then a graveside service and burial. Peter would have dropped a handful of cold soil on the caskets.
    But this hazy image of