The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors by Michele Young-Stone Page B

question. I’m asking a question. Is it some kind of disease? I don’t mean any harm.”
    Abigail slipped her pad and pencil in her front apron pocket and said, “I don’t have any disease. I lost one hundred and sixty pounds and I didn’t lose the skin. Skin doesn’t miraculously disappear along with the fat when you’ve spent ten years eating macaroni and cheese and Oreos.” She grabbed Sissy and Paddy John’s menus. “I recommend the meat loaf.” A strand of Abigail’s dark hair, red in the light, fell across her eye, and she tucked it behind her ear. “I don’t have all day.”
    “I didn’t mean no offense to you. I didn’t know you used to be big. I wouldn’t have known.”
    Abigail repeated, “The meat loaf’s on special.”
    Padraig John said, “I’ll have a High Life.”
    “And you, Sissy? Do you want anything?”
    “The same, I guess.”
    The beers were not delivered to Sec Two by Abigail, but instead by Jeanette. She slammed both bottles down. “I don’t know you,” she said to Padraig John, “but you, Sissy, with your ‘sisterhood’ mumbo jumbo, ought to think twice before making one of my waitresses, one of my friends, upset.”
    Sissy chugged her beer and slunk from Jeanette’s. She hadn’t meant to upset Abigail. She really did have a gift for matchmaking. Her mother had been a matchmaker. It was a real calling. Padraig John told Sissy, “I’m staying.”
    “Suit yourself.”
    He drank four more beers and ate the meat loaf—assuggested—until Abigail’s shift ended. When she departed, he departed, following her home, keeping his distance, to make sure she was safe.
    As Abigail met the locals and breathed in salt spray at Jeanette’s, Buckley and Joan Holt got acquainted. She took him shopping for school clothes at Morton’s department store on Rosenburg Street. (It was their secret. “Don’t tell your mom,” she said. “She’ll try and pay me back.”) As they walked past the palm trees lining the snug street with its shops in pastel pinks, blues, and greens, Joan said, “I didn’t have any children. We didn’t think we wanted any. My husband didn’t think he wanted any, but now he’s dead and it’s just me. You can’t have any grandkids if you don’t have any kids.” She reached for Buckley’s hand.
    “I guess not,” Buckley said, stuffing his hands in his jeans’ pockets.
    “Where are your grandparents?”
    “I only have one. Grandma Winter.”
    “Is she good to you?”
    “I don’t like her. She’s not like a real grandmother. You know … she’s not nice. She wouldn’t think of spoiling anyone. Spare the rod and spoil the child. That sort of thing.”
    Joan pulled a folded paper fan from her purse. Opening it, revealing yellow butterflies, she asked, “Do you like it here?”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    “What did I tell you?”
    “Yes, ma’am, Joan.”
    “Just Joan.” Fanning herself, she added, “Maybe I could be your surrogate grandmother.”
    “What’s that?”
    “A step-in. A replacement, so to speak.”
    “If you want.” Buckley frog-jumped over the cracks in the sidewalk.
    “Careful.”
    He couldn’t remember anyone but his mother ever saying “Be careful” to him and meaning it—until now. When he forgot and let his hand fall loose from his pocket, Joan Holt snatched it up. He couldn’t hold hands with an old woman—he was thirteen! But he did anyway.
    For the rest of the afternoon, Joan Holt talked about her dead husband, how he had been her best friend in the whole world, practically her only friend. That’s how it was with them. They did everything together. They never got sick of each other. “Well, maybe on occasion,” she said, “and then he got sick, really sick, and I took care of him until the end, until he died. Since then, I’ve been alone. Some days,” she told Buckley, “I don’t want to get out of bed.” She coughed. “After he passed, I wanted to die.”
    Buckley said, “I’m sorry.”
    “Don’t