The Puzzle Master by Heather Spiva Page B

didn’t reply. Michael gathered his pals, and they left the store. Luke was at the counter reading a book titled, How to Hunt Whitetail Deer , but Marshall had caught him peeking a glance at them when they were talking.
    “That kid much trouble for you?” he asked.
    Marshall walked over to the counter. Smoke was billowing softly into the cool air, and somehow, it was comforting. Walking into Luke’s store without the smoke was like listening to a pig without the snort. They were one and the same, together forever. That was comfortable.
    “No trouble. Just dumb.”
    Luke laughed loudly.
    “Does anyone else know about Iris’ cancer thing she’s got?” Luke finally asked. Marshall shook his head no and leaned on the counter. He looked at the fishing pole, its shine gleaming back at him from the mother of pearl handle.
    “No. Just me. But, I don’t plan on telling anyone about it.” Marshall looked at Luke, whose eyes were soft and watery. “As far as I’m concerned, she doesn’t have it anymore, and no one needs to know.”
    Luke sighed with relief. “You’re a good boy, you know that right? A good kid and friend to Iris. She asked about you on the way to the doctor, you know.”
    Marshall brightened. “Really?”
    “She did. She hoped you knew that she really wanted to start on that puzzle today, and wants you to start it without her.”
    “She does?” Marshall was surprised to hear that. “But …”
    “No, she said that. Besides, if you ever plan on getting this thing,” and he pointed to the glass case, “you better get a move on it.”
    Marshall grinned. Iris was smart. She seriously wanted him to win that bet. He hoped she was reading another medical journal so she could get that Nobel Prize.
    He headed to the back of the room and grabbed a bag of chips. The mound of pieces was still as they left it. It was intimidating, now that he thought about it. It told him that they were crazy for even trying this one. He picked up a piece. It was a red bit of one of the tons of barns in the photo, which meant major work in trying to figure out which barn was which. He sighed. This was going to be hard. But he’d taken the bet, so at the very least, he needed to get going.
    Marshall opened the chips and grabbed the empty boxes from the other puzzles. He began to put edge pieces into one box. But as he went through the pile, pieces tumbled onto the floor, and scattered everywhere. He decided to separate colors too. All the golden grasses into one, the red barns in another, the trees in another, the blue sky in another. But he ran out of empty boxes. The air conditioning unit rattled in the corner.
    Marshall wished Iris was here. Doing a puzzle by himself was kind of like swimming alone. There wasn’t anyone else to show off to, or to talk to, and though he didn’t want to admit it, lonely too.
    Marshall looked at the wall. The puzzle of the lighthouse was up. He gasped. How hadn’t he noticed that before? He turned around. The cat puzzle and the stallion puzzle were on different parts of the wall too. She’d put them up!
    He smiled and ran his fingers over the pieces. They were tight and fitting, and perfectly matched. The cats stared back at him, and seemed as if they could jump out of the picture and run around him, purring as they went. He already had a story in his mind about how they could take care of the cats in the room, and keep them in there. When Iris and he left for home, they’d let them out of the room so they could roam the store at night and protect it from thieves and mice. They could even use the basket the cats were sitting in to store the other pieces of the big puzzle.
    But Iris wasn’t there. It wasn’t the same.
    Marshall went back to the puzzle pieces and tried to concentrate on finding the rest of the edge pieces. Out of ten thousand pieces, there were probably three hundred edge pieces. It could take all night to put it together.
    But then he realized that that was exactly what