MemorialDay Read Online Free Page A

date. She’s a gorgeous raven-haired beauty, she’s never been married, and she is presently unattached.”
    Mother stopped and frowned before adding, “However, there is an element of danger about her that puzzles me. I can’t put my finger on it. But tell me, what do Emily and Starla have to do with what we’re talking about?”
    Mother thinks I should get over Dru and find somebody. “Are you saying what’s her name, Starla is dangerous, and yet, you want me to do the tango with her when you know danger scares me? Now, don’t you start playing Cupid again, Mother. I’m not ready to do any dating. What I’m getting at is what you told me about those two ladies. You said they were two of the city’s well known psychics.”
    “Yes they are. What exactly are you getting at, Sonny?”
    “Just this…Have they been able to communicate with the dead?”
    “They claim so, and the séance we had at one of my socials was very convincing that they can do just that.” Mother sighed. “Is your next sentence what I think you’re going to say?”
    “It certainly is, and it goes like this. If they are on the level about what they can do, is it really so strange that I have been hired by a ghost?”
    Mother frowned. “Yes, it most certainly is strange.” She looked at me for at least a minute. “All right, Sonny, what does the soldier ghost want you to do, and when?”
    “Tonight, after the graveyard is empty, he wants me to meet with his wife. Her name’s Medea. She plans to kill herself. I’m to stop her from doing so. “
    Mother said nothing, but I saw tears in her eyes.

Chapter Two
    Not all the people who have died for our country are buried in the graveyard Mother and I first visited. Many are in the ones we are now standing in, though much smaller, but kept in excellent condition. The grass has been freshly mowed and the gravestones are cleaned and free of moss. Some of the monuments are several feet tall and appear quite ominous in the dark. The cemetery is busy, full of folks placing flowers on graves and talking. Mother and I were close enough to listen to a sad-faced old guy dressed in blue jeans and a checkered shirt, who had rode up in his car, got out, and was talking to three other people. They were putting flowers on a head stone.
    “I sure miss old Spinny. He was one great individual. I stopped visiting him because of that stupid mistake I made. I’m still kicking my ass and wishing that a doctor had sewn my mouth shut an hour before I went to see him on that last damn day. Damn it all to Hell!”
    “What mistake did you make, dear? You never have told me why you stopped drinking beer with him, every Saturday night.”
    The lady was evidently his wife. She was wearing a flowered dress, a ribbon-shaped United States flag in her gray hair and hugging the sad faced guy with love and devotion on her wrinkled free face. Actually, who else would call him, dear ?
    “Oh, damn, being a history buff, I went and asked him about Pearl Harbor. He was there that day, when Japanese planes attacked.” He paused to clear his throat and take deep breaths before saying, “Spinny got a faraway look in his eyes, as if he began reliving that day all over again. Then, he started to cry. I left his house. That’s why I never visited him again—because of my big mouth and what my words did to him. I wish I could go back in time and change that day.”
    Mother was born in Kentucky. Five years ago, she journeyed back to her old Kentucky home and met relatives I didn’t know we had. She was told about the ones who fought in the Civil War. One was named Roger. He fought for the North. The other— Houston, was his name—fought for the South. Roger had some fingers shot off, evidently by a Confederate soldier, and because he could no longer fire a weapon, they decided he should become a cook. He died of dysentery, caused, possibly, by his own cooking.
    Houston was captured and hung because of his war activities. It