Honey (Shooting Stars 4)

but standing on the porch and looking down at me

was Grandad. He looked angry.

"What?" I asked.

"You should be in the henhouse,"

"Not this soon. Grandad. I wouldn't have been

home this early if I had taken the bus."

"You watch yourself," he warned. He looked in

Chandler's direction.

"The devil has a pleasing face."

Anyone or anything that does is the devil to

you, I wanted to tell him. but I didn't.

Instead. I lowered my head and walked into the

house, away from the fear and the threat that came

from his distrusting eves.

I knew what his trouble was. I thought. He has nothing to bring him out of the

darkness. His only companions were the shadows that

lingered in the corners of our home.

I wasn't at all like him. Rather. I hoped and

prayed I wasn't. His blood flowed through Daddy's

veins and mine, but Grandma Jennie 's and Mommy's

surely overpowered it.

Or else I would face each dawn with just as

much distrust and just as much dreadful expectation. When he lay his head down for the final sleep,

he would finally come out of his darkness only to

enter another. That was what loomed ahead for him. I thought about what Daddy had said about

Uncle Peter and Grandad, how Uncle Peter felt more

pity for him than he did anger toward him.

He might not like it, but I pitied him, too. Even

without Daddy's having told me, I just knew it was

better not to let him know.