Alberta Clipper Read Online Free PDF Page B

of purple lavender. 
     
    ~
     
    Christine parked her car, and walked along the tree-lined avenue to the wrought iron gate of the graveyard.  She stopped briefly at the flower lady's stall before making her way past the old gate lodge, along the tarmac path to the furthest corner of the site, carrying two single, cream-coloured roses.  The sun beat down on her as she turned off the main path and walked past the by now familiar headstones, surreptitiously nodding at each politely. 
    Margaret King, died February twelfth 1998, aged seventy-two years.  Charles O'Dowd and his wife Angela, fifty-eight and fifty-six.  Anne Murphy, died December twenty-ninth 2003, aged ninety-seven years. 
    She couldn’t help but regard these names as her mother’s new friends.  Almost like a secret, subterranean club, these people were her mother’s closest companions in death, and Christine thought it appropriate to acknowledge them.  It had actually brought her a little comfort, in the first days, to think that her mother wasn’t totally alone in the cold ground.  And now, she couldn’t help mentally saluting them as she walked past them each week.  She stopped at a grave of gravel and granite kerbing with a simple marble headstone in the shape of a cross.  After a few moments, she stooped to pull a weed that was trying to push its way up through the stones.  The graveyard was very peaceful.  Birds sang from the trees lining the distant road.  The sound of voices caught her attention, and she looked up to see a small group of older men and women, voluntary gardeners and grave keepers, discussing their plans, surrounded by a few wheelbarrows and spades and bags of mulch.  She placed her hand on the headstone and kissed the top of the cold marble before leaving the roses on the plinth.  After a moment, she turned to leave.  An elderly man hobbled past leaning heavily on a stick, carrying a plastic plant in his other hand. 
    “The deer will eat your lovely roses, pet,” he smiled at Christine.
    “I know.  That’s okay.”  She smiled back.  She heard the same warning every other week from seasoned grave visitors, most of whom had resigned themselves to artificial wreaths for their loved ones.  Christine really didn’t mind.  There was something enchanting about the idea of deer stealing around the graveyard in the moonlight, munching on roses or whatever else they could find.  And she could never leave a fake plant on the grave.  With one last glance at the headstone, she walked back to the main path and returned to her car, binning the weed along the way.
     
    ~
     
    Just after seven PM , Emily arrived.  Christine opened the door to outstretched arms and a bottle of chardonnay. 
    “Hey girl!  I thought we’d have one here before we go out.  Loosen us up.”  She grinned.  “You look great.”
    Christine frowned.  “Not too casual?”  She did a half-turn and stuck out her bottom at her friend.
    “Nope.  Nice ass.”  Em ily whacked her.  “ Gavan will be drooling into his fettucine, wait til y ou see.  This is gonna be great!”
    Emily busied herself in the kitchen, taking glasses out of the press and twisting the cap from the bottle.
    “Best invention ever,” she said, examining the metal cap in her hand. 
    “What is?”  Christine was rummaging through her make-up bag, making sure all her touch-up arsenal was in place.
    “Twisty caps on wine bottles.”  Emily poured two generous glasses, and took them out onto the veranda.
    “Well, that’s partly to do with a shortage in the supply of cork some years back.  Which was primarily to do with the changing climate in the -”
    “You lost me at cork,” Emily called from outside.  Christine joined her and they clinked glasses like it was an age-old habit.  Which it was.
    “Skaal.”  They said it simultaneously. 
    Emily sat back into her chair and regarded her friend.  “Chris, listen to me.  The whole climate thing is, of course,