Rides a Stranger Read Online Free Page A

didn’t waste any time getting through his prayers and rituals. I started to think about the food spread waiting for us back in the church basement. Hot chicken salad, coffee, peach cobbler. Except for a pasty communion wafer, I hadn’t eaten all day. When the service concluded and we turned toward our cars, I saw a woman standing at a distance. She wore oversized sunglasses despite the day’s gloom, and a barn coat and work boots. I couldn’t tell how old she was, but she seemed to move with an easy grace as she turned and climbed into the cab of a pickup truck and drove off before we reached our cars.
    “Do you know who that was?” I asked Mom.
    But she didn’t even answer. She was talking to one of my aunts, and then the pickup was gone.
    “Did you say something something, honey?” Mom asked.
    “I saw someone and I was wondering if you knew who they were.”
    “I’m so tired,” she said. “I don’t even know who I am anymore. Family and friends are a great support, but they wear me out.”
    I hadn’t slept much the night before, so I said, “I understand.”
    “But if you’re up for it later, I’d like your help with some of Dad’s things. He has old boxes in the attic I can’t carry down. You don’t have to sort through them, but just bring them down so I can.”
    “There’s no hurry, Mom,” I said.
    “I know,” she said. “But it’s therapeutic. I did the same thing when my mother died, Grandma Nancy. I went through all of her clothes and pictures. It helped me cope.”
    “Mom?” I asked. “You know I went to that bookstore last night.”
    “That’s right. I must have been sound asleep; I didn’t hear you come in. What happened with that man? What did he want?”
    “Well, it’s a long story. But he had a copy of Dad’s obituary on his desk.” I paused. “I took it.”
    “Why?”
    “It seemed like a keepsake of some kind,” I said. “I guess it seems silly. But the bookstore owner wrote the word ‘stranger’ on it. Does that mean anything to you?”
    “Does that mean anything to me?” she asked. “That sums your father up perfectly. Do you know we dated for two years before I even knew his middle name? Two years. At first I thought he didn’t have one because he always used the initial H. Then one day I saw his birth certificate. I saw that his middle name was Henry. Now why hadn’t he ever told me that?”
    “Did you ask?”
    “I shouldn’t have to ask,” she said, sniffing. “Husbands are supposed to tell their wives these things. But not your father. Maybe he wanted to maintain some mystery in our marriage.”
    “Maybe.”
    “Let’s face it,” she said. “I loved the man dearly. Dearly. But I didn’t know him. And now I never will.”
    I hauled six cardboard boxes down from the attic that afternoon. They were heavy as iron bars, and when I was finished carrying them, I slumped into a living room chair, my back screaming. Dad’s prophecy about me had come true—I was too bookish and didn’t spend enough time playing sports. I decided forty was too old to change and asked Mom where she kept the ibuprofen.
    That evening, we ate food that a neighbor had dropped off. Chicken casserole followed by a peanut butter pie. I hated the fact that we all died, that people I loved—like my father—could be taken away so cruelly. But the food was amazing. Comfort food in the truest sense of the term.
    Mom seemed distracted while we ate. I finally asked her what was on her mind.
    “Are you just feeling sad about Dad?” I asked.
    “Not exactly,” she said. “I’m just thinking about the fact that you’re going to leave and go back to your life. And I want you to do that. But the house is going to feel awfully lonely.”
    “I understand,” I said. “But you have a lot of friends. You’ve always been good at keeping busy.”
    “Sure.” She forced a smile. “Maybe I need to sell the house.”
    “You can think about that at some point.” I gestured toward the