Trouble

“Morning, Agnes.”  Frank leaned against the porch railing.  “Paper wake you up?” Behind the grin, his face wore fatigue.  Every day, Frank seemed to look a little more tired.

“It did, thank you. Come up for your coffee.”

Frank accepted his mug and settled into a chair before taking a sip of his coffee.  He nodded across the street.  “What’s it like living across from the cemetery?”

Agnes looked out into the stillness across the street.  She laughed.  “Well, I get no trouble from the neighbors.”  It was her standard response.

Frank chuckled.  His fingers worried a tiny tear in his work pants.  “I guess that’s a plus.”

"You can count on dead people the way you can’t count on the living.”

“What do you mean, Agnes?”

Agnes shrugged.  “They’ll be there no matter what. They won’t go changing on you.”

The two sat in silence for a moment, watching the eastern sky lighten.

“This about your kids, Agnes?”

“It’s just such a shame, Frank.”

“What’s a shame?”

“You taking on a newspaper job like this.”

“I thought we were talking about your kids.”

Agnes wondered how long each of them could keep up this careful ballet, each nimbly avoiding the subject they wished to discuss the least. She pushed back once again, trying to deflect the conversation from her family—or what remained of it: bitter fragments of broken lives.

This is a portion of an old chapter I worked on several years ago.  I re-worked it to fit with this week's Trifecta Writing Challenge prompt.  This week's word was trouble.