Shadow Unit 15 Read Online Free Page B

family?"
    "Yeah. But he's, you know, he's—"
    "Lacking in social empathy."
    "That's so nice it swims under the point. But he's different. He doesn't say so much of that stuff lately. I wondered if he figured it out."
    "Don't tell him until you feel like you're ready."
    The miles wind by—some in silence, but Tyler mentions his workload at school, and Dice tells him about his new project at work to bring in a bottled beer from each state and territory, until Dice has to ask.
    "Still don't want to see Natalie?"
    "I still don't," Tyler agrees. "I dunno. I worry that she'll see it as a sign that all is forgiven and it's not. I don't know how much of that school year was real. I don't know how much she pushed me."
    "I get you."
    "I can't trust her. I hope she's getting better, but she's an alleged serial killer. I'm not even sure I want to encounter another one."
    "You're going clinical, though."
    "Irony, right?" Tyler chuffs out a laugh and digs around for his water bottle. "Oh, hey. Do you think Rupert Beale will be there? I want to ask him about how he decides what to write and what not to write. When it comes to the anomaly, I mean."
    "I almost want to listen to that. I don't know if he'll be there or not, though."
    Purcellville, VA
    Purcellville's gentrifying. You've watched it happen ever since you moved into your house, tiny on its big lawn compared to the houses that have gone up around it. When the new neighbors move in, they don't talk to you, till one by one everyone you knew on the street is gone, to foreclosures or simply an offer they couldn't refuse, and the pressure for you to follow suit is on. They don't see you when you mow the lawn. They don't see you when you rake the leaves. They don't see you when you shovel the walk and the drive. Their eyes slide off your Jetta, snug in the driveway.
    But somehow, you can't mow that lawn now without feeling the eyes. You're out in a singlet and work pants, a trashed pair of ex-work boots. You know what they think of your man's job, the easy loping pace you set on the trail run, the cuts and curves of your shoulders, your arms. A woman living alone, her only visitor another woman, a woman with no makeup and a bodybuilding habit, a woman of speed, strength, endurance. You push the manual mower the same as you shovel the drive and the corner lot's stretch of sidewalk—at a patient pace you can keep up for twenty minutes, hydrate, and back at it. The neighbors use contraptions they can drive around—the neighbors who do their own landscaping and snow clearing, anyway.
    You know what they think of Ash and you. It's no different than what they thought in school, what they thought at the dances, what they thought at the coffee cauldrons and open circles and spirit gatherings.
    Who cares what they think? And who would care even if they were right?
    You stop in your tracks. You stand up straight and inhale slowly, trying to catch the smell of sandalwood and honey. It's just cut grass, that's all, but you swear you heard it, like Ash was just there—and you're sure that she is, just behind you. You can feel her. You can—smell her.
    She can't be there.
    But she is.
    "You're not there," you whisper, and an oriole sings above your head.
    Because I'm dead? Em. Do you think I would leave you alone? I know you haven't reached out to anyone. Not even Connor.
    "Connor's got his own thing. He doesn't want me hanging around."
    Connor loves you.
    "I know," you say, and start pushing the mower again, grass blades flying into heaps.
    Not like a brother.
    "I can't," you say, and turn with your eyes shut.
    The sense of Ash follows you back toward the house.
    "I can't," you mutter again, but there's no answer, and after a while the feeling of Ash goes away. You push the mower until your phone buzzes the time, and you stop right where you are and drink a glass of water from the pitcher on the porch, the ice in it melted to little floating pebbles.
    "All that yard with a push mower," a voice