the Pallbearers (2010) Read Online Free Page B

all of us.
    I said good-bye to my fellow pallbearers and headed with Alexa to our car.
    We were just getting inside when I heard a woman call my name. I turned. Theresa Rodriguez was hurrying across the lot toward us.
    "Its Terry," she said, as if anyone could ever forget that face.
    "Hey, Terry. God, its so good to see you," I responded, trying to enjoy the reunion, although back then we'd not been close. Back then, I made no effort to know anyone. I leaned forward, and, for the first time in our lives, we hugged. She felt thin under her dark-green pantsuit. She'd always been skinny, and in thirty years, that hadn't changed.
    "This is my wife, Alexa," I said, nodding to Alexa. "Terry and I were in Huntington House together."
    "Old buddies, then," Alexa said, smiling, not reacting at all to Terry's melted face. In twenty-five years, because of her scars, Theresa Rodriguez hadn't changed or aged. She looked just as hideous today as she always had.
    "You going to the reception?" I asked.
    "Yeah." For the first time since I'd known her, I realized that under all that scar tissue her brown eyes were dark and richly beautiful. Why had I never noticed that before? Then she said, "You're a cop now, right?"
    "Yes, Terry. I am."
    "Somebody inside said you work in homicide."
    "That's right."
    "You believe this suicide nonsense?"
    I looked at her, trying to come up with just the right answer. I felt myself hovering on the edge of something. I felt Hawaii slipping slowly away.
    "Hard to say," I hedged.
    "I think it's bogus," she stated flatly.
    I thought about it, not giving her much more than my street-hard cop face.
    "Pop wouldn't voluntarily take a sand ride," she said.
    "We don't know that, Terry."
    She stood right in front of me, her scarred face making her expression impossible to read.
    "What are you doing now?" I asked to change the subject.
    "I work for Child Protective Services. Never got out of the system. I'm trying to make it better for the ones that follow."
    "That's very cool," I said. "Well, see you at the reception, I guess."
    "Okay, see you there," she answered.
    I got into the car next to Alexa, feeling the heat from the sun - cooked interior. I was still struggling to gather my feelings. To put them back in some kind of order.
    "What's a sand ride?" Alexa asked, interrupting my thoughts.
    "It's a shore break that slams you down on the beach. Surfers call it unassisted suicide."
    "Oh," Alexa said. She waited as I sat there thinking about what Theresa had just said. Then I started the car and drove us out of there.

    Chapter 6
    The few times I'd gone back to visit the Huntington House before, I'd had the same reaction. It always looked smaller and grimier than I remembered. My room had been on the second floor of Sharon Cross Hall, a big two-story Spanish house on the east side of the four - acre campus. I didn't know why it was called Sharon Cross Hall. I had never bothered to ask.
    When I was a kid, the hall had seemed huge and imposing, looming majestically over my head. Now it just looked like a plain but badly maintained house that needed a new roof and rain gutters.
    The athletic field had always been dirt and I'd acquired an impressive collection of skin burns sliding around on it. As I walked the campus after the funeral, I'd been expecting to see the new rubberized turf that Pop had told me about. It wasn't there. The same dirt playground greeted me. It also looked much smaller than I remembered.
    Diamond led the five other pallbearers and Alexa on a short tour of the grounds. Nothing had changed but my recollections.
    "What happened to the field?" I asked as we stepped out onto the hard dirt baseball diamond. "Pop told me you were putting in rubberized turf."
    "Pop always had his dreams," Diamond said sadly. "You know how he was. We couldn't afford stuff like that. There was no money to even run this place. It's been a struggle month to month."
    Shortly after we arrived at the reception, I found out from one of