Immortal Sea by Virginia Kantra

Author:Virginia Kantra [Kantra, Virginia]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780425237472
Published: 2010-09-14T23:00:00+00:00

12

ZACK HACKED THROUGH THE SEAMS OF THE CARTON, exposing the soup cans inside. Almost through his first shift. Picking up the price gun, he shot numbers in a row: two-sixty-nine, two-sixty-nine, two-sixty-nine.

Wiley’s Grocery didn’t have scanners in the checkout lines.“No need for them,” George Wiley had explained earlier that evening as they were shifting cartons from the back room. “I know my store. This isn’t America, son.”

He meant the mainland.

I’m not your son, Zack thought.

A vision flashed into his brain of Morgan, tall and broad-shouldered, standing too close to his mother in the hall. His mom had looked strange, not like a mother at all, her cheeks too pink, her eyes too bright.

Zack’s chest tightened as if he’d been running. He stabbed the gun down another row of cans. Two-sixty-nine, two-sixty-nine, two-sixty-nine, and done.

Straightening, he slid the old cans to the front of the shelf and face out. Rotating stock, Wiley called it.

The work was physical. Mindless. Zack didn’t have to think, just follow instructions. He liked that, liked working alone. At the beginning of his shift, he’d had to help Mr. Wiley haul boxes from the afternoon’s delivery to the appropriate aisles. But now Wiley was arranging displays at the front of the store. He was okay, even if he was overweight and going bald and Stephanie’s dad besides.

Zack’s dad, his real dad, Ben, started losing his hair even before the chemo. You could see it in pictures, this dark, W-shaped hairline above a high forehead and warm brown eyes. The details of his father’s face were fading away, blurred by time, overlaid by images of his illness. Zack wasn’t sure anymore what he remembered and what he’d reconstructed from photographs.

A picture of his dad sat on his dresser, taken on a fishing trip to Holden Beach when Zack was ten years old. His dad had one arm around Zack’s shoulders, and they were both squinting at the camera and grinning. Zack’s hair was hidden by his ball cap, and his skin had tanned a golden brown. They looked related, like father and son.

But when Zack looked in the mirror this morning, it wasn’t Ben’s face he saw.

It was Morgan’s.

Hands shaking, he grabbed cans, slung them to the back.

“Last aisle,” Wiley said behind him.

Zack’s hand clenched around a can of chunky chicken soup, two-sixty-nine. He faced it out carefully before he turned. “Yes, sir.”

“You did good tonight. We’ll finish early.”

The praise made Zack uncomfortable. He hung his head, staring at his feet. Big feet, like his . . . like Morgan’s. “Yes, sir,” he said tonelessly.

Wiley chuckled. “Southern boy, aren’t you?”

“Excuse me?”

“Calling me sir. Makes me feel damn old.”

Zack didn’t know how to respond. He was old, as old as Zack’s mom, anyway. Too old for . . .

Another image of his mother standing with Morgan at the foot of the stairs seared his brain.

Too old for . . .

“Any questions before we call it a night?” Wiley asked.

“No, sir. Um, Mr. Wiley.”

Maybe his mother didn’t feel old either. The tightness returned to Zack’s chest.

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