The Unfinished: Chapters 6–10

On the other side of the square, I could just make out the marquee announcing a one-night-only showing of the Evil Dead movies.

Something long and sinuous, undulating unseen, just under the surface.

Something long and sinuous, undulating unseen, just under the surface.

I wished Dad had given me more notice—I was sitting on the freaking porch with my bag at my feet—but the only thing I felt was a whisper of relief, my shoulders sagging, knowing neither of us would have to suffer through a weekend of awkward silence broken by the occasional stilted conversation.

Everything was blues and greens, the scent of vanilla just discernible in the air.

“Thanks, Dad,” Key dutifully intoned, definitely not for the first time, and continued clicking through his queue.

Although sometimes I wondered if Key’s parents’ warmth with me was their tacit permission, their way of saying it would be fine with them if Key and I wanted to be something more than friends.

Key proffered his water bottle, but I brushed it away and shifted to the edge of the sofa.

Key drove agonizingly slowly, until a slight rise in the driveway revealed a small blue house sitting like it had been dropped from the sky between a single oak tree and a decrepit garage that had been painted white a long time ago.

“Ó:nen ki’ wáhi,” Foster said softly with a little wave of his gnarled hand.

Which begged the question—what did it eat?

The poster broke the late afternoon light streaming in the big window behind me, its shadow a palpable weight on my back.

And I guess with his wife gone, he needed a surrogate granddaughter.

At this hour, the shelves formed an orderly forest illuminated only at the ends, the rest shrouded in impenetrable shadow.

“It was unfortunate. To differentiate us, Margot started calling me Franco, and I have to say I didn’t like it.”