I caught her studying Daddy’s stone—the lack of dirt, no moss growing in the carved letters.
“How you can possibly have feelings for the man who killed your mother is beyond me.”
I knew better than to say anything. Correcting her would only lead to an argument, and I wanted to check the bench.
Aside from a couple of days during the winter, I had walked out to the bench nearly every day, and every day I found it empty. I even took to trying different times of the day on the off chance I was just missing her, but still, she was never there.
I didn’t see her in school, either. She said she was the same age as me, and all the kids in this neighborhood went to Lincoln Elementary. That meant she lived somewhere else, but if that was the case, then why was she in the cemetery that day? Who was she visiting? I couldn’t help but think of the woman with her. Why the gun? Maybe the woman kidnapped her, brought her to the cemetery to—to what? That didn’t make sense, either. Nothing about the encounter made sense, and I guess that’s why I couldn’t get her out of my head.
Auntie Jo spread the blanket over the graves and handed me a sandwich—ham and American cheese on white. About a week ago, I noticed she stopped buying Wonder Bread and instead brought home the store brand. Our peanut butter was no longer Jiffy, either. The jar just said Peanut Butter across the front on a plain label. When I asked, she said the diner wasn’t doing as well as it used to and her hours got cut. If things didn’t change soon, she might have to pick up a second job. I offered her my savings, now at one hundred twenty-three dollars, but she wouldn’t take the money.
“Read,” she said, nodding at Momma’s gravestone.
“Seriously? Again?”
“Read.”
“Kaitlyn Gargery Thatch. February 16, 1958 to August 8, 1980. Loving wife, mother, and sister.” I didn’t have to look at the stone. I had memorized the text of both long ago.
“Five years,” Auntie Jo said softly. The smoke trailed up into the heavens from the cigarette pinched between her fingers. I couldn’t remember a time when she didn’t smoke, but lately she seemed to be smoking more. Sometimes she lit one cigarette from the stubby remains of the last one. She puffed, blew the smoke back out. Her teeth were yellow.
Ten minutes later, sandwich eaten, transistor radio and comic book in hand, I found myself heading up the hill toward the mausoleums.
The weather had turned cool early this year, and the wind kicked up, twisting and turning through the spaces surrounding the stone buildings.
The bench was empty.
She wasn’t there.
Sighing, I took a seat and set my comic book down beside me—I slipped the corner under my leg so the wind wouldn’t take it, and switched on the radio.
Static. A bit of Phil Collins. More static.
I tugged the antenna out to full length and slowly pointed it in various directions.
The wind kicked.
Static.
Then Phil Collins again, loud and clear, Suss, suss, sudio.
“You’re on my bench.”
I hadn’t heard her walk up, yet there she was, standing about five feet in front of me in a long, black peacoat.
“Move.”
I started to get up. My heart pounded so heavily in my chest, I couldn’t think. My face flushed. Instead, I sat up straight and pursed my lips in the most defiant pose I could muster. “No.”
She shrugged and sat at the opposite end, smoothing her skirt beneath her thick coat.
The SUV was parked at the far end of the access road, further away than last time. The woman in the long white coat with even whiter hair stood beside the vehicle. Another woman, also in a long white coat, stood beside her. Both were watching us, watching me.
“How have you been, John Edward Jack Thatch?”
“Okay, I guess.”
“You’re not sure whether or not you’re okay? Seems to me your current state should be as easy to determine as the weather.”
“I’m fine.”
“And your parents? Both still dead, I presume?”
“I read it.”
“Read what?”
I pulled my comic book out from under my leg and slid it across the bench to her.
She ran a gloved hand over the cover and frowned. “You read some rubbish called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and I’m supposed to be impressed? Issue number one, no less. To think there might be more.”
When I reached over to open the comic, the girl pulled her hand away with such a quickness, the movement was a blur to me. I noticed a hint of embarrassment in her face, but it was gone in an instant. I opened the comic book to the center, revealing my copy of Great Expectations. The one I had yet to return to Ms. Leech.
Her eyes lit up at this.
The two women in white coats had edged closer and were moving closer still. They both stopped when I looked up at them. My eyes drifted to the edge of their coats, searching for a gun barrel like the one I had spotted the last time, but I saw nothing. Even as the wind kicked up and took hold, I saw nothing. Maybe I had imagined the gun.
“Did you understand it?” the girl said, still looking at my book.
“I read it twice,” I admitted. “The first time, I had to look up a lot of the words and some of the dialogue was hard. It was easier the second time.”
She leaned back and looked down at the book in her hand, also Great Expectations. “I’ve read it twelve times now. When I finish tomorrow, it will be thirteen.”
“Why not read something else?”
“What’s the point? There is nothing better.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve read lots of books. I like some of them plenty better.”
“Well, you’re just a dumb boy.”
“Are you mean to me because Estella was mean to Pip in the book?”
She chuckled at this. “You, Mr. John Edward Jack Thatch, are no Pip. I’m mean to you because you are just a dumb boy deserving of nothing more.”
“Why haven’t I ever seen you at school?”
“I don’t go to school, my teachers come to me. Six in total, every subject you could possibly imagine. I’ve been told I am very smart, possibly gifted, and to go to a public school would be a disservice.”
“Are you rich?”
“I live in a grand house, nearly a castle. We employ a staff of servants around the clock, and I want for nothing. I spend my free time traveling the world, visiting one exotic place after the next, studying people, and places, and culture. Is that what you want to hear?”
I shrugged. “If it’s the truth.”
“It is.”
“Okay.”
She fidgeted with the corner of one of her gloves, tugged at it.
“Why do you wear those?”
“It’s cold.”
“Not that cold. It wasn’t cold last time, and you wore them then, too.”
“Maybe I like them.” She slipped a finger inside the one on the right and pulled it off. Her fingers were long and slender.
“Stella.” The woman with the white hair glared, stepping closer.
Stella quickly put the glove back on. “I like them, is all.” She slipped her hands under her thighs.
“Why today? Why this bench?”
“So many questions…”
“I’ve been here a bunch of times, and you weren’t. Now today, you’re back. One year from the last time. August 8. Why?”