“That’s what she does.”
“It’s kinda creepy.”
The girl smiled at this, then forced it back as if she didn’t want me to see her smile, as if it were something she didn’t give away so freely. “What kind of boy wanders around a cemetery all alone? Where are your parents?”
“Dead.”
“Really? Who killed them?”
Not what killed them or how did they die, butwhokilled them. As if death by another’s hand was the most logical of things.
“What are you reading?” I asked, wanting to change the subject. I didn’t want to talk about Momma and Daddy, not now. There had been enough of that today.
She held up the book so I could see the cover—Great Expectationsby Charles Dickens. The paperback’s spine was nearly white with creases, opened and closed so many times the color was gone, faded and cracked away. The cover wasn’t much better. The book looked a thousand years old, some lost thing rescued from the bottom of a box in someone’s basement.
“Is that the one with the boy and the raft?”
“Hmm. Ugly and uneducated, I see.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“You’re thinking aboutThe Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.That book isn’t even written by Dickens. Twain wrote it. Twain is a hack. Twain isn’t even his real name. He was just a boat captain who managed to scribble out a few thoughts when he wasn’t gambling and drinking.”
I hadn’t read anything by Twain or Dickens. My reading shelf consisted of half the titles from the Hardy Boys collection and a few dozen comics. I didn’t know anyone who read Twain or Dickens, not even my parents or Auntie Jo. “What isGreat Expectationsabout?”
The woman at the SUV had managed to draw closer. I hadn’t seen her move, but she was only about ten feet from us now, watching from the corner of her eye, no doubt listening to every word.
The girl looked down at the book in her gloved hands. “It’s about everything that really matters.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Can I see it?” I reached for the book and she shied away, moving toward her side of the bench. The woman edged closer, then stopped as the girl looked up at her.
The girl placed the book on the bench and slid it over to me with the tips of her fingers. This seemed to calm the older woman.
I picked up the book and read the description on the back.
“My name is Stella,” the girl said. “I was named for the girl in that book, only her name is Estella.”
I handed the book back to her. I half expected her to make me slide it back on the bench, but she didn’t. She snatched it from the air and placed it back in her lap. “When a girl tells you her name, it’s only polite to reciprocate.”
“Reciprocate?”
She sighed. “Respond in kind, do the same.”
“Oh, my name is Jack, Jack Thatch.”
“A common name for a common boy. What is your real name? Nobody is really named ‘Jack,’ it’s usually the informal of ‘John’ which never made sense to me—not like Mike and Michael, it’s more like Bill and William, which is even stranger.”
“My full name is John Edward Thatch,” I told her. “Everyone always calls me ‘Jack,’ though.”
“Of course they do. And who is Edward to you? Surely a family name.”
“My dad’s name was Edward. Everyone called him Eddie. How old are you? You talk funny.”
Her eyes drifted to the older woman, then to the cover of her book. She fidgeted with the pages. “I’m eight.”
