Read The Summer the World Ended for Free Online

so sorry about your Mother, dear,” said the woman. “We worked together for ten years. So tragic.”
    “So young.” Her apparent husband bobbed his head, looking much like she must’ve looked at the teller’s wake… eager to skip out as fast as possible.
    “Thank you,” said Riley.
    A few minutes later, a disheveled man about twenty stumbled over to the casket in a t-shirt, shorts, sneakers, and a jacket that belonged to a dress suit. He blinked at the body and wiped his face with one hand, sniffling.
    “Whoa… Damn, missus M. That sucks.” He fumbled around as if not sure what to do, knelt on the padded bench and bumbled his way through a few minutes of prayer. He made eye contact with Riley as he stood to leave. “Oh, hi. I’m Scott.” He sniffled again and wiped his nose on his sleeve. “I work at the bank. You’re the kid, right? She’s got your pic on her desk.” He fidgeted and hurried away, as if expecting her dead mother to lunge up and grab him. “Uh, sorry.”
    She watched him walk to the front door, hesitate, and circle back to a seat in the last row.
    Another old man stopped by, wan and rickety. He flashed a dour, disapproving expression at Riley before aiming it at Mom. He grumbled as he ambled over to the casket and took a knee, making the sign of the cross as he continued to mumble too low to hear. The longer he muttered, the less Riley cared for him. By the time he’d finished whatever he’d wanted to say and braced a shaking arm on the coffin to stand, her glance had become a glare. He whirled about and toddled right up to her. It appeared to take great effort on his part to present a neutral mood.
    “Here you go, child.” He held out a small, rectangular object, which she accepted out of reflex. “I pray you don’t make the same mistakes your mother did.”
    Once he walked around to the bank of chairs behind her, she glanced down and discovered the gift was a pocket Bible. She put it on the seat to her right, not too worried if she forgot it there.
    A slender woman with deep wrinkles on her face and hair too black to be natural walked by as if Riley didn’t exist. Her outfit and makeup seemed more suited to a college co-ed than someone old enough to be a grandmother. She spent ten minutes talking at Mom as if she were alive. Trivial questions flowed from one to the next without a pause to slip in an answer. Riley wondered if she always did that to people. All Riley got was a two-second wave as the mourner teetered past on extreme heels that made her calves look like dead guinea pigs stuffed into socks.
    Eleven more visitors, three married couples, three men, and two women, arrived over the next fifteen minutes. Riley remembered a few of them from bank parties Mom had brought her to. Mrs. Harris was the head teller. Mr. Eaves was the district manager for the security company that handled the bank’s account. The rest all worked at the bank or in the building across the way. Her mother’s former coworkers trickled past one by one, spending a moment to talk to Riley and offer the usual condolences, as if they’d all rehearsed the same lines ahead of time.
    I swear I’m going to scream if one more person says she ‘looks natural.’
    The dull murmurs of her mother’s former employees and a few regular customers lent a heavy presence to the room behind her. Conversations about work, relatives, pets, and the weather went on for-seeming-ever.
That bald guy didn’t bother to show up.
Riley shifted in her seat, peering over the crowd behind her. No one from the big corporate Christmas party was there, and none of Aunt Bea’s people could be bothered.
Good. She never liked me anyway.
    Riley faced forward again, gazing at her mother in hopes of finding a sign of life. Maybe they’d all made a mistake and Mom wasn’t really dead yet. Despite the crowd, she still felt like the only person there.
    Metal clanked to her right as a gaunt man in a maroon flannel shirt over a white tee,