Beautiful Redemption Read Online Free PDF Page A

I hid Grace’s dentures. Dropped ’em right down in the Postum jar.” It was just like Aunt Prue to find a way to drive her sisters crazy from the grave.
    “Wait—you were over there? In Gatlin?” If she could go see the Sisters, then I could get back to Lena. Couldn’t I?
    “Did I say that?” I knew she’d have the answer. I also knew she wouldn’t tell me a thing if she didn’t want me to know.
    “Yeah, actually. You did.”
    Tell me how I can find my way back to Lena.
    “Well now, just for the teeniest minute. Nothin’ ta get all hopped up ’bout. Then I skee-daddled back ta the Garden here, lickety-split.”
    “Aunt Prue, come on.” But she shook her head, and I gave up. My aunt was every bit as stubborn in this life as she’d been in the last. I tried a new subject. “The Garden? Are we really in His Garden of Perpetual Peace?”
    “Darn tootin’. Every time they bury someone, a new house shows up on the block.” Aunt Prue sniffed again. “Can’t do a thing ta stop ’em from comin’ either, even if they ain’t your kind a folks.”
    I thought about the headstones instead of doors, all thecemetery plot houses. I’d always thought the layout of His Garden of Perpetual Peace was kind of like our town, what with the good plots all lined up one way and the questionable graves pushed out near the edges. Turns out the Otherworld wasn’t any different.
    “Then why don’t I have one, Aunt Prue? A house, I mean.”
    “Young ’uns don’t get houses a their own unless their parents outlive ’em. And after seein’ that room a yours, I don’t see as how you could keep a whole house clean anyway.” I couldn’t really argue with her on that.
    “Is that why I don’t have a gravestone?”
    Aunt Prue looked away. There was something she didn’t want to tell me. “Maybe you should ask your mamma ’bout that.”
    “I’m asking you.”
    She sighed heavily. “You aren’t buried at Perpetual Peace, Ethan Wate.”
    “What?” Maybe it was too soon. I didn’t even know how much time had passed since that night on the water tower. “I guess they haven’t buried me yet.”
    Aunt Prue was wringing her hands, which was only making me more nervous.
    “Aunt Prue?”
    She took a sip of her sweet tea, stalling. At least it gave her hands something to do. “Amma isn’t takin’ your leavin’ well, and Lena’s no better. Don’t think I don’t keep an eye on them two. Didn’t I give Lena my good old rose necklace, so I can get a feel for her every now and again?”
    The image of Lena sobbing, of Amma screaming my name right before I jumped, flashed through my mind. My chest tightened.
    Aunt Prue kept on talking. “None a this was supposed ta happen. Amma knows it, and she and Lena and Macon are havin’ a heap a trouble with your passin’.”
    My passing. The words sounded strange to me.
    A horrible thought surfaced in my mind. “Wait. Are you saying they didn’t bury me?”
    Aunt Prue put her hand to her heart. “Of course they buried you! They did it straightaway. They just didn’t bury you in the Gatlin cemetery.” She sighed, shaking her head. “Didn’t even have a proper memorial, I’m ’fraid. No ushers, no sermons. No Psalms or Lamentations.”
    “No Lamentations? You sure know how to hurt a guy, Aunt Prue.” I was kidding, but she only nodded, grim as the grave.
    “No program. No funeral potatoes. Nothin’ so much as a supermarket biscuit. Not even a book a remembrances. Might as well a stuck you in one a them shoe boxes in your bedroom.”
    “Then, where did they bury me?” I was starting to get a bad feeling.
    “Over at Greenbrier, by the old Duchannes graves. Stuck you in the mud like a possum-bitten house cat.”
    “Why?” I looked at her, but Aunt Prue glanced away. She was definitely hiding something. “Aunt Prue, answer me. Why did they bury me at Greenbrier?”
    She looked right at me, crossing her arms over her chest defiantly. “Now, don’t get yerself all