The Cemetery Boys Read Free Page A

nudge me to call her, to make a connection, to try to forgive her for the things she couldn’t control. But I wasn’t ready yet. So as usual, I countered his nudge with a lie. “Yeah. Maybe. I don’tknow. We’ve got all that unpacking to do.”
    Dad frowned.
    A perky brunette approached our table with a little too much bounce in her step, considering it wasn’t yet ten in the morning. “Good morning, you two. Can I get you started with some drinks?”
    â€œCoffee, please. Cream and sugar?” My dad remained completely oblivious to the stares we were getting. Either he had no idea, or he was trying to make the best of it. Likely, option B. He’d always been a peacekeeper. That’s why it took him so long to get the balls to lock Mom away. Or maybe, in the end, locking her away had been his way of keeping the peace. I wouldn’t know. No one had explained any of it to me. It was like when he’d told me we were moving. Simple, direct, with no room for argument. “Stephen, I’m committing your mother to a mental hospital.”
    My life with Dad was a series of simple statements.
    â€œAnd you?” Donna smiled at me, her pen poised over the small pad of paper in her hand. She struck me as one of those really annoying people who love what it is they do for a living.
    â€œI’ll have a Mountain D—”
    â€œ Everyone! You’re gonna burn. You’re all gonna burn!”
    I whipped my head around to the wild-eyed woman standing just inside the restaurant’s front door. She waswearing a plain gray dress that reached her ankles, with sleeves that stretched all the way to her wrists, despite the fact that it was eighty-eight degrees outside. Around her neck she wore a small silver cross. In her hand she clutched a worn leather book. She didn’t seem to be speaking to anyone in particular, and in return, most of the patrons simply hunched up their shoulders and tried to avoid eye contact with her.
    The chain-smoking hostess approached her calmly, like this was a regular occurrence in her day. “Now, Martha, what have we talked about? You can’t keep coming in here and disrupting people.”
    Martha didn’t look like she gave a crap. She also looked like she pretty much lived on Planet Martha most of the time, with brief visits to the town of Whackadoo. When she spoke again, her tone remained every bit as embittered, but it was quieter, at least. “You’ll all burn. You should be home on the Sabbath. Family and hearth. All of you.”
    By the pinched expression that was settling on the hostess’s face, I could tell her patience was wearing thin. “Martha, we’re trying to run a business here. If Dave sees you in here again causing trouble, you know what he’ll do. He said he’d call Officer Bradley last time, and—”
    â€œYOU’RE GONNA BURN!”
    I was starting to like Martha.
    The door opened, jostling the bell that hung above it, and a girl around my age rushed inside. Her shoulder-length hair was stark black, with streaks of cranberry and thin, plum-colored braids twisting all through it. She was dressed in small-town punk, with bold black-and-white-striped knee-high socks and beat-up military boots. Several safety pins were hooked along the hem of her short black skirt, and the tattered T-shirt she wore depicted a band I’d never heard of. Attached to the front of her shirt, clinging to her curves, was a button that read Buttons Are for Dorks . She definitely didn’t look like a farmer’s daughter.
    She twisted one of her braids between two fingers in a way that was almost childlike. But there was nothing childish about the way she licked her lips or how she grazed the fingernails of her left hand along the smooth skin of her thigh as she looked around the place. I took my time noticing.
    When she saw Martha, she groaned. “Mom, come on. Come home. You can’t keep