My Cousin's Keeper Read Free

hair. He wasn’t gentle. “You sound winded. Thought
I
was out of shape . . .”
    â€œThis street’s got the toughest hill,” I reminded him. “We should have started with Raymond Street and worked our way up.”
    â€œWell, I started with Raymond Street last week.” He smiled. “One of the days you slept in, kiddo. You want to play on a team, then you’ve got to put in the training time. Hmm? No use being a bed zombie or a couch potato.”
    He’d used that phrase on me before, and now he ignored my shrugged shoulders, my wondering if sports were something I might only ever be average at.
    â€œCome on,” Dad said at last. “We’ve done the tough uphill part. Let’s go downhill.”
    After the hill peak, Guthrie Street curved away and down to the old railroad station. No trains had run to our town for years, and there was only a museum of photos and models inside to show what a busy and important place it had once been. A couple of old restored train cars sat in the siding beside the empty platform, but at a short distance from the station, the rail lines disappeared under dirt and grass. I could keep up with Dad on the flat ground and it was a little easier now, knowing as well that we were past the halfway mark and more or less heading for home again.
    We came to the very eastern end of the main street, the point where the railroad line had once led onto the old bridge and away to other towns and, eventually, the city. The bridge was wooden and had grown wobbly with age, too unsafe to walk on these days. A fence ran across at the sidewalk where the bridge began. Sometimes this was another of Dad’s stopping places, but not today. As my stomach and legs began to hurt even more with the effort, he gradually got farther and farther ahead of me. Once or twice he turned to check that I was still somewhere behind him. He raised one hand in a wave, and so did I as I slowed to a walk. We would meet up at home.
    The very first time we had ever run together, I had been so excited about being allowed along that I’d spent the first ten minutes telling him everything I knew about everywhere and everybody in town.
    â€œThat’s the house where Lucas lives. And that’s Mason’s place. His brother owns that really cool car parked in the front yard. And the Imperial Hotel is where Liam’s mom does the cooking. And that blue house is where Ms. Tabor, the librarian at school, lives. And —”
    â€œKieran!” Dad had exclaimed, his breath puffing. “This is training. You have to focus!”
    Now, I stopped outside the thrift shop, where Nan volunteered several times each week. Here, she was not Nan, but Erica, the lady with the unruly dyed hair and interesting earrings. She chose the things that were displayed in the front window. She listened to local gossip and told the customers jokes.
This is my grandson Kieran and my
granddaughter, Gina
, she’d tell everybody and anybody if Gina and I stopped at the shop on our walk home from school.
    I never heard her mention my cousin, Bon, but sensed that she thought about him more than she ever said. By now, there was a newer photo of Bon in a frame on Nan’s fridge, one taken two years before at Dad’s birthday party. Once or twice, I had seen Nan lift the photo away from its frame and look at it for a long time.
    I stretched my T-shirt up to wipe my forehead and then stared at my reflection in the window. My hair was flattened and wet with perspiration, my arms and legs as skinny as a stick insect’s. There were other people out by now, walking their dogs and making their way in and out of the convenience store, always the first shop open in the morning. Dad was nearly a full block ahead of me, and so I began to jog again, picking up speed until I’d almost caught up with him near the corner of Sheridan Street. I could hear the light slap of his running shoes and his