Girl in the Shadows (Shadows 2)

something, she went forward "whole hog," as she

would say, even though it was something she had not

pondered long.

"No one should be impulsive and fall between the devil and the deep blue sea, but we don't live long enough to waste time," she lectured at dinner, where most of her lectures took place. "When you reach my age, you realize that even more. Your heart is like one of them parking meters. God puts a few coins in and you tick away, but that expired sign is climbing and old man Death is getting ready to give me a ticket. I can see his grumpy old face forming in the fog just

outside the windows of my very soul."

The expression on her face, the way she

focused her eyes, put the jitters in me. It was as if

Death was there at the table and she really did see

him.

"How do you know Death is a man?" Trevor

asked her with an impish smile in his eyes.

"I've been introduced to him enough times to

know," she snapped back at him. "And don't you start

giving me some of that superstitious nonsense your

great-aunt stuck in your head. Trevor Washington,

superstitions passed down from your Southern slave

ancestors. You probably wasted a ton of salt all these

years throwing a pinch here and a pinch there over

your shoulder. and I know you won't kill a spider.

Don't deny it!" she added quickly, and pointed her

right forefinger at him.

"If it works, don't complain," he muttered

undaunted. "I've seen you walk around a ladder to

avoid going under it"

"That's because you leave the darn thing right

in a person's path."

It was entertaining watching the two of them go

at it. I felt sorry for Echo, who wasn't able to hear.

When I mastered signing. I often translated their

loving bickering for her and she would laugh with me, "Until you came here," Mrs. Westington told