Six Feet Over It Read Online Free PDF Page A

Rivendell Nursery.
    I yawn. The angel probably wants to, too. It waits patiently beside a perplexing gate made of what looks like bent willow branches, soon to be one of millions of weeping angel statues that Wade, the vocal atheist and self-proclaimed card-carrying Communist, has become obsessed with sticking all over Sierrawood. It’s getting a little hackneyed, not to mention crowded, but he insists. “People love that religious shit!”
    I follow him along a winding forest path over a rickety bridge to a heavy wooden door. Rivendell Awaits is set deep in the stone wall of what was once a mill house for the creek flowing beneath our feet. Sagging, toothless jack-o’-lanterns ooze white wax; gauze ghosts swing from low branches. It was Halloween last night.
    Still no mention of my birthday.
    Tiny brass bells ring in the hazy, pine-filtered light of the mill house and the thrum of a choir of angels … Wait, no. It’s just Enya. Plants everywhere, dusty boxes of bulbs crowd beneath rickety wooden tables laden with pots of flowering vines, shiny, waxy leaves and blossoms. In the thick glass of every window sparkle crystals suspended from silver threads spinning lazy circles in lavender-scented air; rainbows skim across the ceiling, the mossy stone floor, my hands—everything very definitely alive.
    “Wade! How’s things?” Overalls Mom steps from a dark recess to shake Wade’s hand. I follow as they climb over the plants and out a back door into a wide expanse of grassy field, maybe an entire acre—encircled by a ring of tall, tall trees. Mostly pines. I close my eyes and breathe the cold, dusty morning air.
    “Leigh.”
    Wade, arms loaded with six-pack planters of blossoms, jerks his head toward more flats stacked in the grass. “Little less daydreaming, for crap’s sake. Let’s go!”
    Overalls Mom lifts flowers into my arms. “Everything okay?”
    I nod.
    “You’re Wade’s oldest, right?”
    I shake my head. “Just taller.”
    “Oh yes, you’re the one in the office.” She tips her head back and yells, “Hey! Elanor! You two are the same age; you should get together— Elanor! Where is that girl … ?”
    She drifts off to search and I make my escape, lugging the flowers back through the cloud of Enya, over the bridge to the truck. I set them gently inside and make a move to get in the cab, but not before—
    “Leigh!”
    She knows my name. Princess Leia rushes out the door, still the tall boots, still the white apron, but this time over an orchid print dress, dark braids still wound behind each ear. She’s fourteen ? Looks twelve.
    Over the bridge she comes, wide smile. “Hi!”
    Emily.
    Out here in the daylight it’s even more evident; anyone could see the similarity not just in her face, but also … sort of exuding ?
    I can’t breathe to speak.
    “I saw your dad. You look just like him!”
    I nod.
    “Come inside, we’ve got cider from last night.”
    Wade is nowhere. “I think we’re just here for the flowers, we need to get back to Sierra—”
    “You’ve got a minute. My mom’s showing your dad some angel fountains. If my dad wanders out there and gets going, you might have an hour.”
    She reaches out. I pull back instinctively—she grasps my hand in both of hers.
    “Oh my gosh, you’re freezing!”
    She leads me stumbling back over the bridge. Inside the mill house she pulls down rubber bats hanging from strings tacked to the ceiling and tosses them onto a pile of fabric on the counter. Heaping it all over a sewing machine in a corner beneath a stained-glass window, she goes to a hot plate behind the register, pours cider from a pot, puts a clay cup in my hands. No handle and a wobbly rim. She sees me notice.
    “My brother made that. Sorry. He’s not the greatest potter. Boys.”
    The cider is sweet and clovey.
    “Thank you,” I say.
    “Of course! Did you guys go out last night? Bet you got tons of trick-or-treaters.”
    There were limp festoons of toilet paper all