Read Online The Moment Keeper by Buffy Andrews - Free Book Online Page A

white shirt and black pants Grandma bought at the Goodwill store the day after he died. He looked old. I wondered what parts of his body they took out of him and if those who had received the parts knew they came from a drunken bastard.
    There were just the flowers that Grandma bought for on top of the casket. Grandma placed a wedding photo of Matt and my mom beside him in the casket. A few of Grandma’s friends came, but that was it.
    I kept thinking Matt would wake up. I didn’t want him to wake up. I felt horrible thinking that, but it meant I didn’t have to worry that he might change his mind and want me back. I didn’t have one good memory of Matt. Not one. There was no life to celebrate and remember, only joy that the drunken bastard was gone for good.
    “Can we bury him in the backyard?” Olivia asks Elizabeth.
    “Sure. Let me see if I can find a box.”
    Elizabeth returns with a white jewelry box. “We can put him in here.”
    Elizabeth scoops out Oscar and places him on top of the cotton lining. Olivia’s hand trembles as she puts on the lid.
    “Will he go to Heaven?” asks Olivia, sniffling.
    Elizabeth nods. “Of course he will. So don’t be sad. He’s in heaven having a great time with all of his other fish friends.”
    “And people, too, right?”
    “And people, too.”
    I thought that when Matt died, he probably went straight to Hell and that my mom was probably sad that he wasn’t good enough to make it into Heaven.
    We buried Matt beside my mom in the old, overgrown Lutheran cemetery on the edge of town. I had come to this cemetery many times with Grandma to place flowers on my mom’s grave. There was no stone on her grave until a few years ago. Grandma had an envelope that she saved money in over the years to pay for a grave marker. It wasn’t anything fancy. A few flowers etched in a small gray granite marker, but it was at least something.
    My mom didn’t have any life insurance, so Grandma worked out a deal with the undertaker. There was a little insurance on Matt, enough to pay for the casket and some other things. But Grandma skipped the obituary in the paper. She thought it was one cost she could eliminate.Maybe she figured the news story about the crash was enough to tell people he was dead. And, besides, most of the obituaries were filled with flowery stuff about how great the person was. There wasn’t anything even remotely great about Matt.
    Olivia helps Elizabeth dig a hole beside the towering snowball bush in the corner of the yard. The shrub, with its big white snowball-like flower clusters, has always been Olivia’s favorite plant.
    Olivia puts the box into the hole and scoops the dirt on top of it. She pats the ground. “Now we need a grave marker. Can I use one of the extra landscaping stones Daddy has in the garage?”
    “Sure,” Elizabeth says. “I’ll get the stone and you get a marker.”
    Elizabeth returns with a flat stone and places it on top of the fresh grave. “You can do the rest.”
    Olivia takes the lid off of her black permanent marker and writes on the stone: Oscar the fish.
    There was room left on my mom’s marker for Matt’s name. I think Grandma had planned it like that. Smart move on her part because it saved money. Didn’t have to squirrel away money for another ten years.
    “How many spots are there here?” I asked Grandma when we went to the cemetery to see the tombstone after Matt’s name had been added.
    “Your grandpa bought a lot for six. So there’s plenty of room here for me when I go.”
    “That better not be for a really long time,” I said.
    “I don’t plan on it, Sarah. But life has a way of dealing us stuff we don’t plan on.”
    “But who would take care of me?”
    I really didn’t want to know the answer to that and I don’t think Grandma really wanted to answer the question. Truth was I’d end up in foster care like my mom. We had no family, no relatives, no one who would take me in. If something happened to