The Number 7 Read Free Page B

cans marked $7.50 each. I followed him.
    â€œThese are great!” He picked up a coffee can and handed it to me. “Mums bloom while everything else around them dies. They’re hardy survivors.”
    I gave him a wary glance.
    â€œSeriously,” the boy continued earnestly. “Take this one for free. Put it out on your front porch and come back next week to tell me it’s thriving out there!”
    He pointed to the front of the store, his eyes focusing on something behind me. I turned around to see what had caught his attention. Through the store’s front window, I watched as snowflakes began to fall in large, wet clumps.
    â€œFirst snow of the year,” the boy smiled. “See you in a week.” He winked again, grabbed his watering can, and walked away, leaving me with my arm around a can of amber mums and my heart fluttering.
    The drive back to the house was dark. Snowflakes fell onto the windshield with persistence. I breathed heavily into the scarf around my neck.
    â€œI’ve been thinking, kiddo,” Dad began. “This house—” he sighed. “It’s a good house. This town is a good town.”
    Since when?
    I looked happily down at the mums in my lap. There was something intriguing about the boy in the store. His strange knowledge of flowers? The confidence I’d be back? His imperfect freckles?
    â€œLouisa?” Dad repeated, interrupting my thoughts. His eyes focused on the road ahead. “Turn on the defroster for me, can ya?”
    â€œSorry,” I fumbled to turn the dial before the heat began to hum in vibrations off the dash.
    â€œWhat do you think about moving here?” The words came rushing out with such speed I barely understood them. When I finally grasped what he’d asked, I didn’t know what to say.
    Leave North Carolina? Where was this coming from? Until yesterday, Dad wanted nothing to do with this place. And what about me? I had just started my sophomore year. And what about Greta and her entire social network? I couldn’t imagine her moving. She’d throw a fit.
    â€œGreta’s going to throw a fit,” I answered without really answering.
    He looked down at me, and I could see he’d already made up his mind. I wasn’t being asked if I thought it was a good idea. Of course not. I was being asked to support him.
    â€œYou let me worry about Greta,” he uttered. And that was that.

    Dad was on the phone with Greta in the other room to let her know his plans as I sat by the fireplace watching the flames dance a shadow-puppet cabaret. I heard him quietly reassure her that moving during senior year wasn’t the end of the world. He whispered as if he knew I was listening; he whispered as if I was judging the strength of his argument.
    â€œGreta—the mortgage is already paid for up here. Greta, I—”
    I silently wondered if she’d recoil more into the shell she’d recently created for herself. The truth is, we’d all become hermit crabs. Our shells were made of the same substance: vivid memories of Mom, lost memories of Mom, fleeting memories of Mom. We shed our shells just enough in the mornings, sloughing them off and hiding them under the covers of our beds or in between the tiles and the grout in the shower, but when we returned in the evenings, we’d find them—and desperately retreat back into them. My shell was thin. I had my list of tangible, numerical, itemized memories I’d never lose—but Greta’s armor seemed thick. She’d crawl into it at night, into the darkness. None of her friends knew. Sometimes I wondered if even Dad saw how she seemed to disappear after dinner. It was one more thing neither of us acknowledged.
    Dad entered the living room, his hands behind his head. He looked distressed and came to sit next to me.
    â€œYour sister—”
    â€œI know.”
    The fire cracked loudly and sent embers floating up the