The Next Queen of Heaven-SA Read Online Free PDF

you know, dying or anything.”

    “Tabby!” Kirk poked her, hard.

    “She’s out,” said the orderly, and sat back on a jump-seat. “Look, kids, I’m going to have to write up a report. Can you tell me if your mom has been acting strange in the past twenty-four hours or so?”

    Tabitha felt Kirk glance at her. She wired her advice: Pin this on me and just wait to see what I’ll do to you.

    “Mom has an active emotional life,” ventured Kirk.

    “Any sign of increased stress? Or, um, mental breakdown?”

    “She’s raising three teenagers on her own. Does that count?”

    “Fair enough.”

    “She always says we aggravate the hell out of her.”

    Tabitha winced. Oh God, Kirk taking it on himself. Here it comes, watch for it, people: the sniffle. The world’s only living fifteen-year-old crybaby.

    Damn. Tabitha wasn’t going to let Mom do in an afternoon coma what she hadn’t managed to do in her morning screech-a-thon: ruffle out of Tabitha that rich sense of well-being conferred upon her by sex with Caleb Briggs. The deeper Mom wanted to wipe it away, the more Tabitha would cling to that sense of invading glee. Caleb was tawny and twenty. He was a bolt in

    the belt region, tender as kittens in his nipples—who knew about that before last night? Just touching them had been like electroshock therapy and his voice had gone falsetto in a keen—and his thighs could bring down oak trees, or stampeding cattle, or her. Just seeing what she could do to him with a halt, a pulse, persistence, and a little dab of Crisco. I’ve become a living catalog of turn-ons.

    “Who is the next of kin adult?”

    “I’m almost eighteen,” said Tabitha. “Keep her a week or two and I’m your gal.”

    “Yes, but next to you, I mean.”

    “There’s three former husbands,” said Kirk.

    Tabitha yawned. “The was-bands, we call ’em. As in, you know. I saw your husband last night out with a blonde. Oh, you’re so wrong: Phil isn’t my husband any more, he’s my was-band.”

    “None of them live nearby, anyway.” Kirk leaned forward and put his male-model cuticles on display, softly touching their mother’s wrist. “And Mom was an only child.”

    “Well, hmm. Her parents, then?”

    Tabitha snorted. “Escaped through death.”

    The woman seemed either mollified or beaten, but had the gumption to add, “Don’t worry about your mom following their example. She’s going to be just fine.”

    “Thanks for the warning.”

    AT THE HOSPITAL, Mrs. Scales was rolled into the depths, and the double doors whooshed closed behind the stretcher. “It’ll be at least an hour,” said the intake nurse, apparently to her computer monitor. “But we gotta figure out this next of kin thing.”

    “How about Pastor Jakob?” Kirk said to Tabitha.

    “How about Caleb Briggs?” said Tabitha. “He’s twenty.”

    “Caleb? Mom’s never even met him.”

    “She’s out, what does she care?”

    “We’ll do your pastor, that sounds fine enough,” said Nurse Typo, pecking away. “How do you spell Huyck?”

    “He’s her pastor, not ours,” said Kirk. “Tabitha doesn’t go and I only go sometimes. I haven’t been Centered.”

    The nurse looked over the tops of her glasses at them, finally.

    “That’s like being caught in the crosshairs of a rifle, except the crosshairs are the crucifix.”

    “Are they now. How does h-i-k-e sound to you?”

    “Close enough.”

    “We’ll call it a wrap then. Café on the ground floor by the rear elevators. Someone will come find you in the waiting room in about an hour.”

    Kirk went to the men’s room, probably to have a pretty little cry and admire himself in the mirror, and Tabitha headed for the cafeteria, but the gift shop appeared first, so she nipped inside to see if she could snag a pack of gum or something. She sidled around the shelving and just in time caught sight of Solange Lefebvre and Hannah Brewster from Math Reinforcement.
    Solange was an import