Surrender the Dead by John Burley

Author:John Burley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
Published: 2020-10-27T00:00:00+00:00

22

(October 1998)

HELEN REECE OPENED THE DRIVER’S DOOR OF THE WHITE DODGE Dynasty, slid behind the wheel, and waited for Erin and Robbie to climb into the back. “Seat belts, please,” she said as she turned the key in the ignition. The engine fired up immediately, already warm from her drive over here. In the winter it was a different story. She kept a pair of jumper cables in the trunk just in case.

Mrs. Tabaha was standing in the doorway, watching them. Helen gave her a wave before putting the car in Reverse and backing out of the driveway. She pressed down on the accelerator, and the tires kicked up small plumes of dust that took to the air behind them.

Helen liked the Dodge. It was ten years old, and the only vehicle she’d ever owned. Her father had bought it for her in 1988, and she’d done her best to take good care of it. The Dodge had outlasted her old man, in fact, who died of a heart attack a week after Helen’s twenty-ninth birthday. She’d become obsessive about its upkeep since then, changing the oil herself every three thousand miles and taking it to the shop twice a year for preventive maintenance. The car had its share of quirks, but Helen felt closer to her father when she drove it, and that was reason enough to keep it running.

“How are you this afternoon, Robbie?” she asked.

“I’m fine, Mrs. Reece.”

“I haven’t seen you since school started back up again. What’ve you been up to?”

“Not much,” he said. “Getting ready for Halloween, I guess.”

She glanced at him in the rearview. “Are you going trick-or-treating this year?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “My mom wants me to stay home. She doesn’t like the idea of us running around the neighborhood after dark.”

Helen put on her blinker—a habit more than a necessity in this empty stretch of road east of Wolf Point—and turned left onto the highway. “You could come over to our place this Halloween,” she said. “We’ll tell scary stories and eat fistfuls of candy corn until our eyes pop out of their sockets.”

“Mom.”

“What?” She glanced in the mirror in time to see Erin roll her eyes, an expression she’d picked up earlier this year. There had been none of that when she was younger, but Erin was thirteen now, a tough nut to crack.

“That chicken you like had a brood of chicks last week,” Helen told Robbie. “She’s got eleven of them following her around the yard.”

“That’s great,” Robbie said, smiling. She could see it in the rearview.

“Peep, peep, peep,” Erin said, and Robbie’s smile broadened, his dark eyes glancing toward her daughter.

Helen returned her attention to the road in front of her. It was a rural area, the occasional homes nestled far back from the roadway. They drove in silence for a while, entering Wolf Point and passing the Agland Co-op on their right. The parking lot was mostly empty on this Saturday afternoon in mid-October. These days, people did their shopping in the morning, while the sun was still climbing in the sky.

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