Hard Edge - Tess Oliver Page 0,13

is. On Grady’s new running shoes.”

I smiled. “The gray ones? I remember that. He had saved all his lawn mowing money up for months. The house was shaking with the sound of those damn things spinning in the washing machine. He must have washed them ten times to get the red stains out.”

Kenna hid her pink cheeks in her hands. “It was so embarrassing, and I felt so bad.”

“Then you used the money you’d been saving from babysitting to buy him a new pair. I think he liked those even better just because they came from you. He considered himself the lucky one, Kenna. We were both lucky to have you around.”

She grew quiet and stared down at the ground. Her thin shoulders shook with sobs. It was like being on a roller coaster. You could breathe and talk and even smile for a second and then the weight of it took you back to tears and sadness.

I dropped my arm around her shoulders, and she leaned her head against me. “There’s no way he should be gone already,” she said shakily. “The whole damn world feels a little colder now.”

“I’m not completely sure this town or my life will ever feel right side up again, Trinket. But I’m glad you came.”

“Will you be here long?” She peered up at me. Just seeing her big brown eyes blinking up at me, helped lift some of the gloom from my head. “It seems like we have a lot of catching up to do. I hope you stay for awhile.”

“I’m thinking about hanging around for a week or two. My dad seems to take some comfort in having me around. Not sure why, except I guess I’m his only kid now. If you’re staying, then I’ll stick around too, Kenna. Just sitting here with you in this circle of shrubs drinking piss warm whiskey has already helped me some.”

“I’m glad, Cade.” She leaned her head against me again. “See, and you always thought I was just an annoying, freckle-faced brat.”

“Pretty much.” I tightened my arm around her.

Chapter 5

Kenna

I’d been to exactly two funerals in my life. One for my hamster, Sookie, where my parents and I stood out in the pouring rain quickly trying to shovel dirt into the hole before Sookie’s coffin, an empty tissue box, disintegrated from moisture. The second was for my ninety-five-year-old great-grandmother, Maddie, a woman who had ‘seen it all and laughed through most of it’ or at least that was what her seventy-five-year-old son, my grandfather, had said in the eulogy. ‘She had a good long life’ it was a phrase I remembered hearing again and again as I sat at my grandmother’s house after the funeral eating crumb cake and sipping bitter lemon tea. I was only ten, and I couldn’t understand how anyone could think her life had been long enough. I was prepared and determined to live long past one hundred mostly because, at ten, the reality of inevitable death was too terrifying and too hard to swallow. That was still mostly true. Especially when the person in the highly varnished casket, surrounded by white and yellow roses, was only twenty-six years old. There were no mutterings of ‘he had a good, long life’ at this, my third funeral. Maddie’s funeral had been somber but mostly pleasant with hugs and smiles as people reminisced about her colorful personality and her love of life. But somber wasn’t even close when it came to describing the atmosphere at Grady’s funeral. There just wasn’t an adjective bleak or grim or angry enough to convey how it felt to see a perfectly vibrant young man being laid to rest for eternity.

My feet seemed to be floating above the grass, not wanting to touch the ground or admit this was actually happening. I clutched the stuffed Scooby Doo dog close to my side. I’d decided on my way out the door that I had to carry it with me.

I was an hour into what was solidly one of the worst days of my life. So far it had been a blur of tears and brief conversations with people I hardly knew or recognized anymore. I realized the only things I would remember about the whole awful day was that a bumble bee kept buzzing around the pews causing mild cases of panic throughout the pastor’s sermon and that Kevin Stratton, Grady’s dad, an ex-marine, who had never wavered from having perfectly ramrod straight posture had walked into