Crown of Thorns by Sigmund Brouwer

Author:Sigmund Brouwer [Brouwer, Sigmund]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2011-01-20T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

I sat parked in my Jeep, with Retha’s Wal-Mart receipt in one hand and my cell phone in the other.

Earlier, I’d taken Angel for a walk around town. It had been fun to indulge her, and she more than repaid me with her wide-eyed appreciation of everything new to her.

Now it was five in the afternoon, and the temperature had cooled to become almost pleasant. It helped that I had parked in the market area opposite the Doubletree, where the hotel threw shadows on

the bustling of tourists. The top was off my Jeep, and I smelled the nearby horses. This was the staging area for carriage rides, and I was close enough to hear the snorts of blindered Clydesdale horses.

I had decided first to call the woman named Retha. My intention was to ask her if she wanted me to come and get her, as it didn’t seem I would be able to bring Billy Lee back to her. I wondered if she had been able to keep her secret, that Billy Lee was no longer in the household.

The cell phone is an amazing tool, a by-product of the wave of technology that has transformed the world in the time since

my childhood. It is the same technology that I take as much for granted as the next person; it never occurred to me that something as simple as caller identification on the other end of my call would lead to as much trouble as it did.

So I dialed the number on the Wal-Mart receipt, blithely unaware of yet another chain of events that my bumbling would set in motion.

“Yup,” a male voice answered after two rings.

“Hello,” I said. “Is Retha there?”

“Nope. And her husband don’t take kindly to men callers for her.”

The line went dead as the person on the other end of the phone hung up on me.

**

“Girl! You look good!” Camellia squealed with delight as she pranced around Angel in tight quarters of their secret place. “What done happen to you?”

Angel grinned. “Fancy hairdresser. And shopping. Today, with that guy I told you about. Nick. The one with a leg he can take off. We went to some fancy shops on King, and he caught me looking in the window at some clothes.”

“Girl, you look pretty but your face is sad.”

“You know I can’t stop thinking about Grammie Zora.”

Camellia reached across for Angel’s hand. They sat in silence for several minutes.

“There’s been other people gone dead,” Angel said. “We both seen that. But it wasn’t real because it was other people. Know what I mean?”

With her other hand, Camellia stroked Angel’s hair. Camellia was the only person Angel allowed that from.

“What do you think happens to people after they die?” Angel said.

Camellia leaned back again and hugged her knees to herself. “My sister asked me that. I told her we just get put in some dirt and bugs eat everything except our bones, and that’s what they use for those skeletons in the doctor’s office.”

“Yuck,” Angel said. “It’s bad enough people die.

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