Keeper of Keys Read Online Free Page A

paid much attention. Precious on the other hand made you think of a smiling rosy-cheeked child or an expensive piece of porcelain.

    Precious enjoyed being compared with delicate things and took even greater pleasure in the sound of her name in the mouths of the men who courted her. She was a beautiful woman who had always been pursued by the men of Sandersville - she had four children to prove it - and had never been married once. Precious was still pregnant with her second child when she started dating the man that would father her third.

    "I'm changing my name legally to Precious." She announced the day the check I'd written out to her cleared. Aunt Beck, their mother, didn't even raise an eyebrow at her daughter's announcement, she just moved the phone she cradled between her cheek and shoulder from the right ear to the left and waited patiently for the representative at her bank to come back on and tell her the status of the check I'd written out to her.

    "I wanna make sure my headstone say Precious Lady on it."

    Lady was her surname and had been a great source of torment to her father Daniel Lady. If he had money he would have changed it, but he was poor his whole life and had died that way just days before the six numbers popped up out of the lotto machine on television, making me a millionaire.

    "Uh-huh, here lies Precious Lady, may she rest in eternal peace!" Precious squealed and began to jump up and down with glee. Her babies, three walking and one creeping began to squeal and bounce right along with her.

    "It cleared!" Aunt Beck screamed above Precious and her children's jubilance. "I'm rich, rich rich!" She yelled hugging the receiver to her chest.

    I turned into the driveway that would lead me up to Poor Boy's house. The dogs he kept in the yard began barking as soon as my headlights sliced through the darkness. I saw a shadow move behind the front window and then the curtain parted and Poor Boy's eyes were squinting back at me.

    I put the car in park and that's all my body allowed me to do. I broke down and cried until Poor Boy came and dragged me into the house.

    "What's happened Kai?" Poor Boy asked over and over again. It couldn't be a death because everyone he knew lived either up the road or down the road and they were all living and breathing when he'd put the cat out and locked the doors for the night.

    Sherry, his wife, watched nervously from the kitchen as she tried to decide whether to put the kettle on for tea or pull the plastic cover off of the new Hamilton Beach, for coffee.

    "What done happen to you? You sick? Someone dead?" Poor Boy asked and folded his hands in his lap. I knew his real interest was whether or not I had a will and who I was leaving the rest of my money too.

    "You tell me now, tell me what's wrong with you."

    We sat on a couch so white that it should have been a crime to have it out there in the country where cows and goats grazed a stones throw away.

    Not wanting to repeat himself, he edged closer to me and placed an awkward arm around my shoulder.

    "Poor thing," Sherry said, finally deciding on tea.

    "Where is Alice?" I was finally able to speak. "Where's my daughter?" I asked barely able to see him through my swollen, tear filled, over tired eyes.

    Poor Boy shot his wife a look before he answered and I would always remember that look saying: Should we tell her? She seems kind of crazy.

    I didn't want them to have any reason to try and keep my mother's namesake from me. I straightened my shoulders and wiped at the tears and road grime on my face. "I come to take her home." I said trying so hard to sound calm.

    "She with Precious tonight." Poor Boy said and then glanced at the phone. "But its so late now, you can get her in the morning." He quickly injected.

    "No I - " I started to object.

    "Kai do you really want her to see you this way?" Sherry questioned in her baby soft voice. She set a cup of tea down on the table in front of me. "You should get some