The Impossible Knife of Memory(33)

“A graveyard?”

“No, silly. This time of day.”

“Sunset?”

“When the sun is below the horizon, but it’s still light enough to see, it’s called ‘civil twilight.’ There’s another word, too, an older one, but I can’t remember it.” He reached up with his right hand and rubbed the back of his neck. “They’re farther back, I think. Next to some pine trees. Let’s hustle, it’s almost dark.”

“They?” I asked. “Who’s they?”

He was already six strides ahead, despite the limp. I caught up with him at the top the hill.

“Found them,” he said quietly before heading down the other side.

I shivered. A wide valley of the dead spread out below me, hundreds of them gently tucked into the ground in neat rows, their whispers frozen into the stones above them: I am here. I was here. Remember me. Remember.

I zipped up my jacket and jogged down the hill, past graves decorated with flowers—some plastic, some real and faded—and small flags on wooden sticks. Dad was waiting by a headstone speckled with pearl-green lichen near a row of tall, dark pine trees. He knelt and tried to brush off the lichen. It was stuck fast, like it had been growing for a long time. He took out his pocketknife and scraped at the words and dates with the blade:

rebecca rose rivers kincain 1978–1998

barbara mason kincain 1942–2003

“I didn’t know that she was here.” I pointed at the top name. “My mother.”

(The word sounded like a foreign language. Like I had pebbles in my mouth.)

“Becky got along so well with Mom that it seemed like the right thing to do,” Dad said. “Your grandmother taught her how to cheat at bridge. That’s what I imagine they do in heaven.”

“Where’s your dad buried?”

“Arlington. Mom didn’t want him there, but he insisted. Always had to do things his way.”

I studied the names again, waiting for tears to bubble up. It was hard to figure out what I was feeling. Confused, maybe. Lonely. I wondered if Gramma could see us standing there, looking lost as the shadows grew deeper around us. I tried to picture her. I didn’t remember what she looked like and that made me more upset than anything. “Do you miss her?” I asked. “I mean, them?”

“I miss everybody.” Dad stood up, folded his knife and put it back in his pocket. “Doesn’t do any good to dwell on it.” He brushed his hands together to clean off the lichen. “Should have come sooner to clean this up.”

I pointed to the headstones in the next row. “How come those have vases built into them and ours don’t?” “Mom ordered the stone when Becky died,” he said. “She didn’t like cut flowers, my mom. Preferred flowers that were planted. Maybe that’s why she didn’t order the kind of grave marker that came with a vase.”

“We should do something to make it look nicer.” “I guess.” He stood next to me and pointed to the empty grass to the left of the grave. “That’s where you need to put me when my time comes.”

I swallowed hard. “You’re not going to die.” I leaned my head against his shoulder. “Not for a hundred years.” He put his arm around me. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath of pine and damp earth. Only a few birds were singing and far away, an owl called. Leaning against my father, the sadness finally broke open inside me, hollowing out my heart and leaving me bleeding. My feet felt rooted in the dirt. There were more than two bodies buried here. Pieces of me that I didn’t even know were under the ground. Pieces of Dad, too.

“Gloaming,” Dad said.

“What?”

“That word I couldn’t remember. Gloaming. That short, murky time between half-light and dark.” He hugged me quickly and let me go. “Night’s here, princess. Let’s head home.”





_*_ 40 _*_

Finn texted me Tuesday morning to ask if I wanted a ride to school. I was kind of surprised, but I said yes and then I put on a cleaner shirt. By Thursday, we had fallen into a sort of pattern. Right around six thirty in the morning, he’d text: ?

and I’d text:

K

and by the time I got to the corner a block south of my house (no way was I going to let him pick me up where Dad might see), Finn would be sitting there, his engine smoking because he hadn’t fixed the leaking oil valve yet. He also slid into the habit of eating breakfast burritos and drinking chocolate milk at first-period lunch with me and Gracie and Topher, in addition to meeting me in the library after school to try and convince me that precalc wasn’t some enormous joke that got out of hand.

I was beginning to understand why people were horrified when they learned that instead of attending school from grades seven thru eleven, I’d been riding shotgun in my dad’s semi. It wasn’t that my life was ruined because I never sang in a holiday choir or that I missed the thrill of reenacting the Battle of Gettysburg with water balloons and squirt guns. It was that I didn’t know The Rules.

I hadn’t even known The Rules existed before that week. I was not a totally ignorant feral recluse. Watching Animal Planet had alerted me to the existence of mating behavior. Plus, having eaten a lot of bologna sandwiches in truck stops, I’d heard the kinds of things that grown men say to other grown men about these issues. But I was pretty sure that the blue-footed booby’s courting dance wasn’t going to get me anywhere with Finn, and if I approached him in the way that truck drivers recommended, it wouldn’t end well. Things were complicated even more by the fact that there was something weird about Finn. Not zombie weird. He was more of a cyborg with a vivid imagination. But he’d spent enough time around the zombies to adapt some of their ways. He knew The Rules. I didn’t.