She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be - J.D. Barker Page 0,250

are dumb. They can’t spell.”

Neither of our children had demonstrated an ability, a gift, a curse, or anything out of the ordinary for a six-year-old girl or a seven-year-old boy, but I’d be lying if I said we didn’t watch for one every day. I think we both knew it was coming, probably sometime soon, and we’d be ready for it, whatever it was.

I took Stella’s hand and wrapped my fingers around hers. She didn’t wear gloves around us. There was no need.

That night.

The kiss.

The approaching train.

When our lips touched, I thought I would die. I expected to meet the same fate as Leo Signorelli and all the others who met Stella’s touch, her kiss. I figured I wouldn’t even feel the train when the impact finally came, I’d be gone that fast. I didn’t die, though. I felt no pain at all.

My gift, my curse, my condition, whatever the shot did to me… Dunk called me the boy who could not die. Whether just from luck or some odd manipulation of my DNA as a result of my parents receiving the shot, there was some truth to that. Through the course of my life, I should have died many times over, Charter’s attempts alone should have been enough, yet I hadn’t. I figured one day I probably would. Nobody lives forever, but I had no idea how my particular condition impacted those final laws of nature, the ones enforced on all living things.

Stella and I learned there was an odd byproduct to my particular gift, too. Her need, her hunger—she found the sustenance she required in my touch. The boy who could not die, could share. When August 8 of 1999 came around, she demonstrated no signs of her previous illness. The date came and went like any other, and each year passed much the same.

If she and I were a battery, one would be positive, the other negative, and combined we canceled out. We completed each other.

When I told Fogel I hadn’t had a drink in twelve years, that was true, too. I never craved alcohol when Stella was near. Since she and I were completely inseparable, that particular need never reappeared.

We married on August 8, 2000. The date held so much meaning for the two of us. There was never a consideration of another date, it had to be August 8. The day became one of celebration.

“What are you thinking about?” Stella asked, shielding her eyes from the unusually bright Pittsburgh sun.

“You,” I told her. “How much I love you.”

Stella smiled and kissed me again. “And I love you, too, Pip.”

“Yucky,” Dalton said, frowning.

Clara giggled.

“Aren’t you going to be late?” Stella said.

I looked down at my watch. Nearly five o’clock. “Crap.” I started back down the hill. “Meet at Mineo’s at seven?” I yelled back at them as I broke into a run.

“Say hello for us!” Stella shouted.

2

State Correctional Institution, known as Western Pen to the locals, is a medium security correctional facility operated by the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections. Sitting on a little over twenty-one acres on the banks of the Ohio River, the prison was about five miles out of town. I got there in a record nineteen minutes.

I never did recover my old Jeep from the hospital parking lot in Minden, but I bought a shiny new Wrangler last year. With the exception of my driver’s license, I emptied my pockets in the car and left everything on the passenger seat. Experience taught me the security lines moved much faster when you traveled light. I removed my belt, too.

I crossed the parking lot and managed to get in line about a minute before the guards closed up the doors behind me. That meant I’d have about twenty minutes inside before visiting hours officially ended.

On the other side of security, I followed the green line on the floor to the visitation room—more of a hallway, really. Pay phones lined the wall on the left while small cubicles lined the right. I took an empty seat in the second to last space and waited.

Dunk hobbled in about a minute later on a plastic cane. It bent slightly under his weight. Because metal or wood could be fashioned into a weapon, only plastic canes were permitted. Dunk managed to break at least one each week, but the department of corrections seemed to have an endless supply. This particular cane was pink.

I picked up the telephone receiver and pressed it to my ear, trying not to think about