The Last Orphans

The Last Orphans Read Free

Book: The Last Orphans Read Free
Author: N.W. Harris
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vanishing as quickly as they appeared into the cornfield on the other side of the road. Angry hornets, stampeding cattle, and now this—one heck of a storm was surely brewing. Or, he feared, the heat was getting to him, and he was starting to hallucinate.
    The sky took on a light green hue, a sickly color that preceded really nasty weather. With a mile and a half to go until he made it to Granny’s house, Shane started a limping sort of jog, knowing he’d better get into her cellar soon or he could be in big trouble. Sharp pain exploded in his feet and ankles with each step, and he expected half of the moisture in his shoes might be blood. He didn’t dare stop and look, knowing the pain would only get worse once he exposed his ruptured blisters to air.
    The sound of an engine downshifting behind him made him run off onto the shoulder. The car’s horn beeped, and he turned to see his aunt’s rental slowing down as it approached. Relief flooded through him, and his legs suddenly felt too rubbery to keep him upright.
    “What in heaven’s name are you doing out here?” his aunt asked once she came alongside him. Her eyes were red and moist, likely from crying over her mother’s death.
    “ Dad kicked me out,” he replied, immediately wishing he’d lied and said he just thought it was a nice day for a stroll.
    “O h Shane, I’m sorry to hear that,” she said with an unsurprised, though compassionate tone. Smiling kindly, she had the decency not to pursue the issue. “You’d better get in, looks like we’re in for some inclement weather.”
    “ It does, don’t it?” he said, rushing around to the passenger side.
    “Where are you heading?” she asked once he’d climbed into the car and buckled his seatbelt. She didn’t have the thick, southern accent everyone else Shane knew did, having escaped hickville to go to Yale just after she’d graduated from high school. She sounded so proper and intelligent to him.
    “Granny’s,” he replied, leaning closer to the air conditioning vent and peeling the saturated, button-down shirt away from his chest to dry it.
    His aunt gazed thoughtfully at him for a long moment, her sad, brown eyes so much like his mother’s that it made his chest ache. “That’s where I was going too.” She shifted the car into gear. “I have to help settle her estate before I return to New York.”
    It was hard not to stare at his aunt while she drove; she reminded him so much of his mom. She had the same wavy, black hair, pointed nose, and always-tan skin. But his aunt had a more sophisticated and well-traveled air about her. Shane had always been in awe of her and found it hard to talk to her because he felt ignorant and backwoods in her presence. Wisps of gray twisted through her hair now that he didn’t remember seeing when she visited last Christmas. He wondered if his mother would have some too if she were still around—though his aunt was two years older than his mom, who would’ve been forty-five this year.
    She glanced over , and he looked out the window. His mother’s death still hurt like it happened yesterday. Adding the pain from losing Granny made him expect he’d never smile again. How the heck do people ever get over stuff like this ? he wondered. Maybe they never did. Maybe they just acted like they did because it was what was expected.
    The car weaved through the curviest part of Rural Route 2. He always felt a little carsick when he passed through here.
    “You’ve grown so much since the last time I saw you,” she said. “You look just like your grandfather.”
    It was a nice compli ment; the pictures he’d seen of the wiry Green Beret soldier impressed him. Granny said he was a stern man who didn’t smile much, and Shane reckoned his grandfather must’ve seen some things in the wars he’d fought that would kill the joy in anyone.
    “He was tall , with a darker complexion too. You have his brown eyes and his dimpled chin.” She retrieved a green, glass

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