Pinch of Love (9781101558638) Read Online Free PDF

unexpectedly, and she called and tearfully said he shouldn’t come. She kept apologizing, and he kept saying, “No, no, no need to apologize.” That was half a year ago, and she hasn’t re-invited him.
    EJ pours himself a cup of New Orleans. He sips while flipping the chairs one-handed. Near the window, which is fogged from the ovens, he notices movement outside. He peers into the street and is startled to see a person there, a very bundled-up person. It could be anyone, and EJ squints before he notices Ahab. The Captain is unmistakable. He’s the only greyhound in Wippamunk, and the town’s only ninety-pound dog that wears a coat and boots six months of the year.
    EJ recognizes Zell’s yellow hat and mittens. The same Zell who caught lightning bugs in jars with him and Nick when they were seven or so. The same Zell—her bangs sprayed into an unmoving claw—who sat next to him freshman year in Ye Olde Home Ec Witch’s class, sampled a blueberry muffin from the first batch he ever made, and said—even after Ye Olde Home Ec Witch gave her a detention for talking—“These’re amazing, Eege. You should be a baker or something. Seriously.”
    So this is it, EJ thinks. Zell got his note, and now, finally, they’re going to talk.
    Something is under her arm—the present. The oven present from Nick. Good God, EJ thinks; maybe she wants him with her when she opens it. He swallows hot coffee and stretches his free arm over his head. Good God. What the hell will he say to her?
    Ahab leads Zell. They turn into the lot and approach the Muffinry. But they both stop short. They look at something, or for something—the source of an odd noise, maybe. EJ cranes his neck, but all he sees is blackness. Suddenly, Zell and Ahab turn around and practically run down the sidewalk, back down Main Street and out of view.
    â€œLost her nerve,” EJ says. He sips some New Orleans and flips a chair. “Lost her nerve.”
    Moments later headlights sweep the parking lot. EJ checks the clock on the wall: The little wooden spoon is on the four and the big wooden spoon is on the six, which means Travis is late as usual. At least he’s consistent.
    The bells of the front door tinkle as Travis enters; the bristles of the mat make a scratching sound as he wipes his boots.
    â€œMorning, hey,” Travis calls.
    â€œMorning.” EJ opens the back door. He’s about to toss a big empty butter tub into the recycling bin when a sort of silent command to be still grips him. His whole body seems infused with a wide-eyed and tingling awareness; if he had hackles, they’d be fully upright. It’s the same skin-prickling, pupil-dilating readiness he experienced just before Nick’s passage. That’s how EJ thinks of it: not Nick’s death, but his passage. Not something randomly, regrettably horrible, but something noble, like fate. Or at least like something Nick wouldn’t protest, were he made to understand the events that would take his life.
    EJ got the terminology—“the passage”—from Charlene. Early on he told her about his nightmares in which he witnesses, over and over, what happened to Nick. She wrote back that all survivors have nightmares; it’s a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder. She wrote about “the passage” of Katrina victims: “They didn’t die. They experienced a passage into somewhere else. That’s what I truly believe.”
    EJ grips the empty butter tub. Goose bumps form along the nape of his neck. Something approaches—possibly the same creature that distracted Zell and Ahab moments ago. He takes a step back and thinks about black bears raiding trash barrels, then remembers it’s winter, and bears are hibernating. Maybe it’s a mountain lion, he thinks; they’re rumored to roam the area.
    Near the recycling bin, movement flashes—filmy, alien green eyes appear. The