Read For Sure & Certain for Free Online Page A

embarrassment at this simple truth.
    His Mom and sister’s did all the cooking and cleaning, planning and shopping. They kept the house smelling of yeasty rolls and sweet pies. They provided him with the comfort of farm fresh eggs, warm biscuits, and sizzling slabs of bacon to warm him on the weekend mornings.
    Thinking about the breakfast his family enjoyed two hours away caused his stomach to rumble and his head to hurt. Coffee. That’s what he needed. He looked at the machine sitting on the counter. He had enough experience the past few days to know it was much too weak to fuel him.
    He uncharacteristically bit his fingernails. He could go out and find some. Simple. There were harder things than procuring a cup of coffee. But at the moment Abel couldn’t for the life of him think what one of those things might be.
    Standing on the sidewalk, he looked both directions before deciding on left. He remembered a café on his map from Tara and knew they must sell coffee. Walking briskly, the humid heat of the city summer already warming his neck, he rolled up the sleeves of his button down shirt. It was still early, just after eight and the streets were quiet, still not awake for the day.
    He came upon the café’s corner quickly and paused, seeing a girl bent down at the entrance to the restaurant, trying to gather papers fluttering from her hands. She stretched her arm to catch them before they flew off.
    Abel reached for one that landed on the pavement and handed it to her, “You okay?” he asked.
    “I’m fine, truly. Thank you though,” she said, her voice revealing tenderness he didn’t expect. Her eyes widened and she took him in. “I know you.” She smiled, and then looked down at her shoes, as if regretting her words. She wore a pink cotton shirt as a dress, and ruffled socks to her thighs, brown laced boots nearly as high.
    Abel looked up, blushing. Not at her clothes, his cheeks reddened because he didn’t remember her. “I don’t think--” he began. “No, I mean I don’t know you, I just saw you. At the bookstore. Ugh. Now I sound weird. I’m not a stalker. I just.” She stopped, shook her head, and laughed. A laugh clear as crystal, he could see through it.
    She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, her papers now buried in the crook of her arm. Her body so delicate it looked as if she could break, as if she was made of the bone China forbidden in his community.
    “The bookstore, ja?”
    “Umm, yeah. The other day? I don’t know why I told you that. That was weird of me. I’m sorry.” Her sentences were choppy and short; her cadence didn’t match her appearance. She looked fine, fragile. She looked lost.
    Abel didn’t know his way around this city, these streets all jumbled together, and although he knew he had gone to a bookstore a few days before, he knew with certainty he couldn’t retrace his steps. The steps that got him here were a long way from home.
    Maybe he was lost, too.
     
     
    Marigold
     
    She took in his suspenders and straw hat on the humid summer morning. His gray eyes and shaven face were a pleasant surprise. Most hipsters around campus wore a beard, or at least an ironic mustache. She liked seeing his jaw, he looked strong. A different kind of strong than most of the college students she met.
    "My name's Abel,” he said, sticking out his hand politely. She shook it, his hand calloused and rough.
    "Abel. Like, Cain and Abel?”
    He nodded.
    “Are your parents Bible thumpers or something?"
    He smiled, one of those wide smiles that aren’t self-conscious or self-aware. A smile offered freely and easily accepted.
    “Sort of,” he said, not seeming to take offense to her intrusive question. “They're Amish."
    Marigold tilted her head to the side and he matched her movements, as she realized the broad fell pants and black boots were not about being urban-chic.
    "And you?" she asked.
    "I'm a guy." He didn’t offer more of an explanation, and Marigold understood that.