Grim Reaper 01 - Embrace the Grim Reaper

didn’t have to talk, and left his daughter a huge tip, paying also for Casey’s lunch.
    It made sense, Karl being Eric’s dad. It explained Eric’s feeling of protectiveness of the townspeople, his disdain for Karl Willems, and even his presence at HomeMaker, when Casey had ridden over the day before. It didn’t explain why he hadn’t told her. But then, she could make a guess at that.
    Sliding her doggie bag to the middle of the handlebars for better balance, Casey thoughtfully rode toward the B & B. Poor Eric. He comes home, most likely to try to ease some of the pain his father has caused, only to fall in love with a HomeMaker employee who subsequently is fired, and then dies. Whether she committed suicide or not wasn’t irrelevant, of course, but whether it was by her own hand or someone else’s, the end result was the same. The tricky part was that if she did kill herself, not only was that hugely horrible, but it meant that Eric’s father had essentially killed her.
    Casey shook her head, but stopped quickly, as it made her wobble, and she hit a pothole, sending her almost into the path of a car traveling toward her. A Bug. She stopped before she crashed into the curb.
    Leila screeched to a halt and glared at her through the windshield. She rolled down her window. “Why don’t you watch where you’re going?”
    “Sorry.” Casey held up a hand. “Lost control for a second.”
    Leila looked in her rearview mirror, but no one was coming. “What are you doing here, anyway?”
    Everyone was so concerned about that.
    “Just had lunch at the diner.”
    “I don’t mean that. I mean here in Clymer. We don’t need you.”
    Casey sighed. “I’m just traveling through.”
    “Well, then, why don’t you keep on going? We’ll find someone else for the play. That lady that was there last night.”
    Casey nodded. “I appreciate the thought you’ve put into it.”
    The girl frowned, obviously not sure whether Casey was being sincere or not. “Eric just lost his girlfriend, you know.”
    “Yes.”
    “So it’s not fair, what you’re doing.”
    “What am I doing?”
    She rolled her eyes. “Going after him, of course. You should just leave him alone.”
    “I’m not—”
    But a car was coming, and Leila gunned her engine, her tires squealing as she raced away. Casey wondered if the girl knew how to drive without burning rubber.
    Letting Leila go with a shake of her head, Casey’s mind went back to the blow she’d just been given. Eric was Karl Willems’ son? It just didn’t seem possible.
    Casey took a turn up an alley she thought would be a shortcut back to The Nesting Place. But she’d turned off a road too early, and the alley deadended at someone’s garage. Turning around, she took the next road to the left, and rode on the sidewalk until she found the next alley. This one went through farther, taking her behind Home Sweet Home, and eventually past the theater.
    The theater. Where she’d felt closer to Reuben than she had in some time.
    She jerked to a stop, made a U-turn, and pedaled back toward the Albion.
    The parking spaces in the back were empty, and the heavy steel door was locked. She walked her bike around to the front of the building and parked the bike just off the sidewalk, underneath the marquee. These doors were open.
    Stepping into the lobby she took a deep breath, wallowing in the familiar smells of dust and old wood. Newer theaters might have better technology—although not always—but nothing could beat the atmosphere of a space that had seen a multitude of performances. No matter that this place had shown movies for years. It was still a performance space, where people came to escape from reality, if only for a couple of hours.
    The theater was dark except for one blue light on the stage, lit to prevent people from falling off the edge in the dark. Casey walked down the aisle, running her hand along the tops of the seats, until she stood before the stage. The polished wood on the stage floor was smooth under her fingers, and she placed her palms face down, searching for any soul, any life that had been left by actors in bygone days.
    She propelled herself onto the stage, landing easily on the balls of her feet. She jumped up and took that into a spin, parrying across the stage, remembering choreography from one of her best attempts at stage combat. Romeo and Juliet.
    A pencil lay in the dusty wings of the stage, and she grabbed it, holding it up like a