These Unquiet Bones Read Free Page B

have a box of her jewelry in your room somewhere?”
    “It was among the things of hers I got from the old house.”
    Amy carefully opened the locket and found a picture of the late Ellen Barrett Snow. She swallowed the hard lump of sadness in her throat, admiring the blond woman with the bright white smile and expressive brown eyes. “She’s beautiful.”
    “You look more and more like her every year, too,” Hank said somberly.
    Amy looked up to see her father’s deep hazel eyes grow cold and distant as he stared at his breakfast with a brooding frown. A dark cloud passed over his face, signaling to her the subject of her mother was closed, just like the investigation into her death. Her father had seemingly given up on that, too.
    She wished she could ask him why. She wished she could talk to him about difficult topics without fear of his reaction. She wished their relationship weren’t so conflicted, so love-hate.
    He was the only parent she had left. She needed a closer bond with him. She only hoped that, as last time, it wouldn’t take a tragedy for things to improve. Amy glanced back at the picture of her mother.
    Please, God, no more tragedies.
    In her room after breakfast, Amy slipped into a purple hooded-sweater, snatched her black backpack from the floor, and faced the dresser mirror. “Let’s have a good day.”
    She repeated that mantra every morning since slitting her wrist two years ago. It was a therapeutic technique Dr. Massie taught. “Lets have a good day.”
    Just as she spoke, a horn blasted outside.
    With tension gathered in her shoulders, she hurried to the kitchen, popped an anti-depressant, and swallowed it down with a handful of water from the sink. She then grabbed the paper lunch sack from the counter by the fridge and exited the house before her father blasted the horn again.
    She found him underneath the carport smoking a cigarette next to his red, clay-encrusted Ford pickup truck. He wore a brown leather jacket, red flannel shirt, and sunglasses with fiery lenses that made him look like the devil.
    Amy shivered, as he watched her descend the steps. A thick haze of smoke drifted eerily around his hairy face.
    Hank licked his upper lip and sneered. “About damn time. Don’t have all mornin’ waitin’ for you to get all prettied up. Gotta open the shop at eight sharp. Got cars to fix.”
    “Sorry.” Feeling his anger bearing down, Amy walked timidly around the passenger side of the truck and climbed in.
    She heard him mumble something derisive about the length of her skirt as his snuffed out his cigarette with the scuffed toe of his boot and eased behind the steering wheel.
    “Click it,” Hank muttered, buckling his seatbelt and starting the engine. Amy obeyed him as he pulled down the gravel driveway and backed onto Tatum Avenue.
    Peering out the passenger window, she admired the work she did yesterday in the front yard. Trees and bushes obscured their modest red brick house from the street, but she could still make out her accomplishments in decorating.
    The flimsy cobwebs in the azalea bushes, the plastic skeleton hanging from the living room window, the plump orange pumpkin on the front porch, the sheeted ghosts swaying in the breeze from low-hanging magnolia branches made the thinly wooded yard looked nice and spooky. She loved decorating for holidays, especially Halloween, the night when spirits walked the earth.
    Amy believed in ghosts. Her mother— who had grown up in an old plantation house that was supposedly haunted— did, too, and had told Amy plenty of spooky stories.
    Ghosts were everywhere, her mother used to say, and sometimes they made their presence known when you least expected.
    They do this because they either had unfinished business or an important message to send a loved one— a warning, perhaps. There were many different reasons.
    Hank dug his hand into her hair and gently massaged the back of her neck. “You’re my pride and joy, peanut.”
    Amy leaned