Prophecy Read Free

rolled to life. “Woof.”
    “Hey, Chester.” I squatted to pat his fluffy sheep doggie head. “Did you meet the neighbors?”
    “Woof.” His halfhearted response warmed me. If Chester wasn’t concerned, neither was I.
    “Did you eat?” Mom was dressed in blue scrubs and white sneakers. Her bag sat at the foot of the stairs, ready to go. I barely saw her on nights we both worked. She hated it, but after taking seventeen years off to raise a daughter, she’d accepted the only available shift without argument. She couldn’t be picky and she couldn’t stay with Dad. You cheat. You lose.
    “Yep.” I rubbed my tummy, pretending it wasn’t filled with fizzing nerves after all the wild stories I’d heard tonight.
    Mom sloughed out of the blanket and threaded both arms through her coat. She wrestled her hair free from the collar and smiled. Her brown eyes sparkled. “They have sons.”
    I laughed. “You in the market again?”
    “No, but you are.” She lifted her bag over one shoulder.
    “I’m not.” Never again in this town.
    “Kirk was a jerk.” Her smile widened. “It’s probably not even a coincidence that rhymes.”
    I averted my eyes, choosing to focus on the house across the cornfield, which normally was dark with shadows but now seemed illuminated by a hundred indoor lights. “I’m waiting for college. Zoar’s a small town. Dating here is complicated.”
    Mom moved toward the door, pity in her voice. “They aren’t all the same. Men, I mean.”
    “I know.” I didn’t. I actually wondered daily how many people weren’t liars instead of the other way around.
    “The boys are cute.” She opened the door and stopped to look at me.
    “I heard they fled here to escape all the charges against them.”
    She made a sour face.
    “And they’re criminally insane, insanely rich… And generally insane in a variety of other ways.” I ticked off the insanes on my fingers.
    Chester ambled to the door and tugged on his leash dangling from the coat rack. “Woof.”
    “Lock up after your walk and stay in until morning. A storm’s coming.” Mom gripped my chin and kissed my cheek. “No wild parties.”
    I crossed my heart and hooked Chester onto his leash.
    Mom jogged down the steps to her Bronco, throwing one last kiss over her shoulder and gripping the coat to her chest.
    I wiped inevitable lip prints off my face with the back of one hand.
    “Come on, Chester.” Wind whipped leaves and dirt into tiny hurricanes on the sidewalk as we rounded the house to the backyard. “Make it fast, mister.”
    Chester and I jogged through the grass to the decrepit cemetery where he liked to do his business. The cemetery was older than most things in town, which was to say old . The crumbling headstones and rusted iron gates charmed me, like living history books. I’d made rubbings of the stones during walks with my dad when I was in grade school, had my first kiss under the willow in the back, and cried my eyes dry on the broken stone wall when I learned my dad did the deed—the ultimate betrayal—and we were leaving. To others, it didn’t make sense to fear the sight of an old home and yet wander comfortably in a cemetery. It made perfect sense to me. The cemetery, I knew. I understood. I had hundreds of memories there. Happy ones. The house was a mystery cloaked in hearsay and dark tales. I peered at the tall gables in the distance. Hale Manor stared balefully back over the top of the small cornfield where a spinning scarecrow creaked on its post, thanks to building winds.
    “Woof.” Chester barked at a pair of black squirrels playing chase in the trees.
    I traced the unusual symbol on a headstone with my fingertips. The symbol was my favorite mystery of the ancient grounds. I leaned against a replica of the winged goddess Nike. She stood sentinel near the center of the graves. For years, I’d assumed Nike was an angel who’d lost her marble head to a storm or age. Mom corrected me. She’d pointed the