Acts of Love Read Online Free Page A

as still, listening to their breath, and to the subterranean cracklings of the mountain that they had not noticed until now but that suddenly disturbed the very air between human and animal, while the doe, head cocked, returned their stare. Then, just as abruptly, it swiveled on its spindly legs and vanished back into the woods.
    â€œI’m hungry,” Julia complained as soon as they started walking again. “When are we going to eat?”
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    W HILE T ED NAPPED THAT AFTERNOON , sprawled atop his sleeping bag, his arms and legs splayed in the dirt, his open mouth streaked with saliva, Julia led Ali to a large pine a few yards away for the day’s lesson. It had been going on for years, this secret school of theirs: Julia grading Ali’s coloring books according to how well she stayed within the lines, Julia passing along inside information about teachers Ali would have and how best to work around them, Julia interpreting schoolyard events, the fiery vicissitudes of playground allegiances, Julia deciphering their parents’ arguments, which seeped through the vents of closed doors and expanded to fill the house like smoke, Julia handing up conclusions fully formed so that Ali, easygoing and lazy, became used to receiving information wrapped and tied by her.
    Julia looked at Ali, her face so open, so hopeful of a cure. It worried her, all this softness. She knew how dangerous it could be. How easily bruised. Each lesson was aimed at tempering it, this boneless pliancy of Ali’s that others found so sweet. Julia had taken it upon herself to teach Ali what their mother could not. How to be hard and smart and knowing. How to survive. Things she needed to know. Once, Julia had made Ali climb beneath an entire block of parked cars, as if the weakness could be shimmied out of her. It is only adults, after all, who cling with such fervid sentimentality to the notion that childhood should be made to last as long as possible.
    She took the nettle Ali had been playing with from her hand. She paused. Julia, at thirteen, had a perfect sense of timing.
    â€œDon’t ever believe him,” she said in a low, fierce voice. “Never. Not ever.”
    Ali nodded.
    â€œDon’t ever believe anyone.”
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    T HAT NIGHT , Ali, Julia, and Ted sat huddled about the small campfire Ted had taught them to build out of a pyramid of dry twigs. The low flames rippled about their feet, lighting the bottom half of their faces with a frail orange glow and filling their hair with the dust-rich scent of smoke.
    â€œOkay, so maybe we won’t be bringing home any antlers for the den, but it sure feels good being up here where a person can breathe.” Ted scrunched a fistful of hard earth between his fingers.
    â€œIt sure feels good,” Ali agreed sleepily.
    Ted smiled. Ali, whose doubts were still so easy to assuage, whose love did not have to be won anew each day but who loved him still, loved him even now. “C’mon, partner, I think it’s time for you to turn in.” He gathered Ali in his arms, surprised by the weight of her, the fleshiness of her eleven-year-old body, and tucked her into her sleeping bag. “I love you,” he whispered as he kissed her forehead, smudged with dirt.
    â€œI love you, too,” she answered, quietly, so that Julia would not hear.
    When he returned to the campfire, Julia quickly erased the secret messages she had been scrawling in the dirt and wrapped her arms tight about her bony knees. Ted sat down beside her, watching her angular profile in the fire’s flickering light.
    â€œI’m not the enemy, you know,” he said softly.
    â€œI never said you were.”
    â€œYou haven’t stopped saying it for the past year. Julia, whatever happened was between me and your mother. It had nothing to do with you.”
    Julia remained silent, patient as a spy.
    â€œIt’s complicated,” Ted went on. “I don’t expect you to