The Covenant Read Online Free PDF

hugged me like her oldest and dearest friend. I tried to return an affection I did not feel or deserve. I had only met her once, for a few minutes at a bar, half a lifetime ago. Why she remembered me, why she cared enough to try to help me, I didn’t know.
    She introduced me to her children—a boy and a girl. I’d seen the daughter, Cassie, yesterday, jumping rope. She was tiny for her eleven years and looked more like eight or nine, small-boned and pretty like her mother, with big brown eyes that stared holes through you. The boy was barely old enough to walk and would grow up with few if any memories of his father. His name was Eli. Dressed in his little black suit with a red choo-choo engine tie, he held on to the hem of his mother’s dress and shook my hand very gravely.
    Jenny hadn’t changed much since the last time I saw her, still the same girlishly pretty face and too-sharp nose, but she bore the pale, worn, faraway look you see in the eyes of tornado victims. Her lips trembled as she smiled and held me at arm’s length to look me over. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
    Another woman creeped into the room behind her. She looked younger than Jenny by several years and nothing like a sister, a tall, leggy brunette, dressed like everyone else (except me) in black, but hers fit her better. She didn’t need to wear heels, but she wore them anyway. She’d been in the bathroom, trying to hide her swollen dewdrop eyes and perfect little red nose under a layer of expensive powder. The only thing not gorgeous about her was her weak, thin-boned chin, but the rest more than made up for it. She slipped her hand behind the preacher’s elbow and clung to him like a tree in a flood. Jenny introduced her as a friend of the family—Holly Vardry.
    I said, “I’m ready to see the house whenever you are.”
    â€œMeemaw’s house?” Holly’s eyes widened a little too dramatically, and she gripped his arm tighter than ever as she pressed her svelte body against him.
    â€œMrs. Lyons is going to photograph it,” he said as he shrugged himself free of her. It bothered me that we hadn’t even negotiated the job yet, but I decided to let that ride for now. No doubt, he could afford my services. “We can go now if you like.”
    I said I would like that very much. I could see the questions in Jenny’s eyes, questions she would find a way to ask if I hung around for very long. The preacher started for the door and I followed him.
    â€œCan I go with y’all?” Holly asked, but she didn’t wait for an answer. As soon as we were outside, she dodged around me and sank her claws into the preacher’s arm again.
    â€œI hate Meemaw’s old place,” Holly said as we crossed the wide, shaded lawn.
    â€œIf you hate it so much, why’d you come?”
    She wrinkled her nose for an answer, but I had no idea what that meant. Just before he slipped on his shades, the preacher’s glance told me he was wondering the same thing.
    *   *   *
    The sun was warm on our backs as we crossed the field below the levee, headed toward the woods. Tiny green grasshoppers rose up on papery wings and buzzed away in long arcs. We walked between the twin corrugated tracks left by some bulldozer ages ago. Holly had a difficult time of it in her heels, so she kicked them off and left her shoes lying in the weeds. I thought about going back and picking them up. They probably cost more than my weekly rent.
    As we entered the woods, the air seemed to lift and draw away, as though we’d climbed to a different altitude. Long ranks of trunks, brown and gray with lichen, towered away into numinous green clouds of foliage overhead. Wild grape vines as thick as my leg swung in long curves from branch to branch.
    A footpath wound its way through the undergrowth, crossed a dry creek by way of a single log and began to rise up. Dozens of other