Shadows Gray Read Free Page A

Will?”
    “I like Sonnet the way she is.”
    Point one for Will.  “I promise to comb my hair,” I say as I leave the kitchen.
    “And put on jeans!  And some lip gloss!” she hollers after me.
    “No lip gloss,” Matthias says disapprovingly as I pass the couch, “That stuff is not for nice girls.  Only street girls wear color on their faces.”  Matthias doesn’t get out much.
    I do comb my hair and change my pajama pants for jeans, although I doubt either one improves my outfit much. It looks sunny and hot outside today and so I grab my favorite hat as well, a cap with the Budweiser logo on it.  I’ve never actually had a Budweiser but they make excellent caps.
    It is unseasonably hot once I step outside our little house.  The heat hits me in the face like hot steam from one of Prue’s soups.  It makes the peeling paint more obvious; the whole house seems dried out and shriveled in size.  The wooden planks of the porch are warped and our mailbox leans to one side.  I flick a bug off my favorite spot to sit – our porch swing – and fluff the indoor/outdoor paisley fabric of the cushions before I leave.  It’s not a long walk to where Prue and Dad have their vender’s cart set up, but I swing by the coffee shop on my way and get an iced tea from Micki, the manager.  By the time I reach the food cart, I am ravenous and could eat whatever Prue slaps on a paper plate for me.  It’s melt in your mouth meat with salted potatoes and cabbage.  I do so love the Irish.
    Prue is tall and very tan and leathered looking in complexion.  She does have the sort of face that a camera would love to capture, simply because she is unusual and seems out of place wherever she is.  Which, of course, like the rest of us, she is.  She has long salt and pepper colored hair that she wears in braids that are then twisted around her head several times, and she is large and rather intimidating looking.  Her skin is the color of mocha and her ethnicity is always a debatable question.  Prue isn’t my grandmother by blood but she has traveled with my dad and me for as long as I’ve been alive, and before that.  She’s been with Dad since he was a teenager and lost his own parents.  She speaks several languages but mostly lapses into a mixture of French and Native American.  She makes sure to swear in English so that everyone can understand it though. She’s accommodating like that.
    My father is tall and dark, like I am, but his eyes are brown.  He looks like he should be a college professor of something literary, and he is in fact a bit of a history buff.  Well, I suppose we all are since we experience more of it than the normal person who stays put in one century.  He has that air of musty books and reading glasses and bowties about him, as if you could find him on a library shelf and not be surprised.  He is aimless and sad much of the time and our whole group tends to baby him.  Everyone wants to see him smile, laugh, forget.  He rarely does.  He is not a man of rainbows and sunbeams, my father.
    I sit on the concrete wall behind the food cart and swing my legs as I eat my lunch.  I butter up Prue as much as possible, telling her how wonderful her cooking is and how nice she looks today, but judging by the scowl and the way she smacks my knee with a fork I’m guessing she isn’t buying what I’m selling.  So I abandon the compliments, take the fork away from her, and tell her about Luke Dawes, Photographer.
    “And he didn’t say, Prue, but I bet you he probably pays for his models,” I finish, taking a sip of tea through my straw and trying to sound casual.  Prue is extremely fond of spending money.
    She grunts and stirs her pot of cabbage. She removes a bay leaf and flicks it in my direction.  Getting Prue out of customer service would probably be an excellent idea.  I remove the leaf from my jeans.
    “He takes nice pictures.  Just think about it.  I saw some of his photos and he’s