Grace by Richard Paul Evans Page B

miles from our home and it took me almost an hour to make the journey. And that was without all the snow and ice. And I was wearing my canvas converse high tops.
    â€œDang it!” I shouted, which was about as harsh an expletive as I ever used, and started off for home. An hour and a half later I walked in our front door, my feet soaked and numb from the cold. My father was reading a book. He looked up at me. “You’re late.”
    â€œI missed the bus.” I wiped my feet on the scrap of carpet my mother had put by the front door. “How are you feeling?”
    â€œGetting better,” he said, which he always said.
    My dad continued to look at me with a peculiar expression I couldn’t read. The Bible says that the guilty flee when no man pursueth, I guess that’s how I was with my secret. Had he found out about Grace? Did she leave something in the bathroom? I wondered if he was waiting for me to spill the beans, like the time Joel threw a baseball through a neighbor’s window and our dad asked us everything about our afternoon—except about the broken window—until we finally caved.
    â€œWhat?” I finally said.
    â€œLook at what I’m doing.”
    I looked at him and still had no idea what he was talking about. “Yeah?”
    â€œI’m reading a book.”
    What does this have to do with Grace? I thought. “I didn’t know you couldn’t read.”
    â€œDon’t be a smart aleck,” he said. “Of course I can read. I can turn the pages.”
    â€œOh. That’s great.” I hoped I sounded excited.
    â€œDarn tootin’.” He went back to his book.
    I walked out of the living room into the kitchen. Joel was at the table working on a jigsaw puzzle. He looked up at me.
    â€œWhere you been?”
    â€œI missed the bus.”
    â€œYou walked home?”
    â€œNo. I flew.”
    He went back to his puzzle. “Want to help?”
    â€œNo. I’ve got to go to work.” I lowered my voice. “Have you checked on…?”
    â€œWhat?”
    I tilted my head toward the back door. “You know.”
    â€œThe girl?”
    â€œShhh!”
    â€œI didn’t know I was supposed to.”
    â€œShe’s probably hungry.”
    â€œIt’s like having a pet,” Joel said.
    I went to the pantry. I selected cans from the back of the shelf, carefully considering what I could take that my mother wouldn’t miss. I grabbed a couple cans of Van de Kamp’s pork and beans, a can of Campbell’s cream of chicken soup, and a can of string beans. We had an old army cooking pan in the clubhouse and I figured she could heat things over the kerosene lamp. I cut two thick pieces of my mother’s homemade bread, and put it all in a brown grocery sack along with a can opener, a fork, a spoon, a plate, and a bowl. Then I retrieved my schoolbag and went out back. As I neared the clubhouse, I could smell something bad. When I opened the door the smell intensified. The light and nightlite was off. “Grace?”
    She didn’t answer but I could hear her lightly snoring. I thought it was a little strange that she was napping this late in the afternoon. I set the paper sack inside the door, along with the things from her locker, then rode my bike to work.

CHAPTER Nine
    Hawaii is the most isolated place with a big population
on the face of the earth. It even has its own time zone.
I think that’s how I feel back here.
    GRACE’S DIARY
    Monday at the Queen was the slowest day of the week, but that didn’t mean we had less work. Mr. Dick created what we called the Monday death list. I think he put things on there for us to do just so he wouldn’t feel like we were wasting his money, like putting all the paper money in the cash register president’s head up and facing in the same direction or changing the words on the sign up front.
    The worst job was changing the oil in the fryer.