Boy Who Shoots Crows (9781101552797) Read Online Free

climb up outta the dirt after you knocked him for a loop.”
    â€œShe’s a good-looking woman,” he had finally said. But it was more than that. It was that inexpressible something. That out-of-nowhere, for-no-reason-whatsoever fierce tug of longing. That indefinable hunger he had not felt since tenth grade, when the new girl, Patrice Moore, had walked into his homeroom. After Patrice’s and little Chelsea’s deaths, he had never expected to feel that need again, never wanted to. Then Tina showed him a photo in a magazine. And he resented the way it made him feel. He wanted nothing to do with such a feeling.
    â€œSo don’t you think you oughta pay the lady a visit?” Tina had asked. “Welcome her to town and all that?”
    He told her, “I don’t get paid to be the welcome wagon.”
    Over the next nine months, the matchmaking attempts subsided to a halfhearted remark or two now and then—much less frequent than the number of times he remembered that photograph and the feeling it engendered. Such thoughts always came unbidden. But he had no desire to entertain a fantasy that, if indulged, could only end in grief, so whenever the airbrushed image of Charlotte Dunleavy came to mind, he immediately pushed it away by remembering that wonderful, aching fullness of Chelsea asleep on his chest, her tiny hands against the sides of his neck, or of Patrice curled against him, one leg thrown over his.
    But now the woman who had been only a photograph, unreal and untouchable, sat across from him at a small pine table in a farmhouse kitchen. She suffered from migraines and had lovely, wounded hands. He could see in her eyes that her divorce or some other injury had left its mark on her too. She sat with her bare feet crossed at the ankle and tucked underneath the chair. Her chestnut hair was slightly mussed and looked as if she had not brushed it yet that day. She looked smaller and less perfect than the woman in the photograph, but unfortunately for him, Gatesman had become a man who was most touched by imperfection, most moved by the bruises and scars life left behind.
    He said, “So you remember getting ready to start painting. And what time of day would this have been?”
    â€œWell,” she said, “by habit I’m an early riser. So it all depends on when I wake up. If it’s still dark outside, I might run the vacuum for a while. The noise helps me to . . . I don’t know how to explain it.”
    â€œTo push everything else away,” he said, “so that you can do what you have to do.”
    â€œExactly,” she said. “It helps me get my head empty, I guess. Get myself ready to paint.”
    The sheriff sipped his coffee. Then he said, “I fish.”
    She smiled and nodded but offered no other response.
    â€œSo you remember doing that yesterday morning?” he asked. “Vacuuming?”
    â€œI do, yes. Then, when it started getting light out, I went into the study . . .” She nodded over her left shoulder toward a set of closed French doors. “It’s the dining room, actually. Used to be. But it has the best light.”
    â€œI drove by last summer and saw the Hagan brothers doing some remodeling. They put in a punch-out and installed a bay window?”
    â€œNot so much a bay window as a window bay. My light catcher.”
    â€œYou mind if I have a look?”
    â€œYou’ll have to open the curtains,” she said. “I’ll wait here.”
    The room was long and narrow, adjacent to the foyer but with the former access door walled off now. He felt for a light switch on the wall, found it, and turned on the recessed lighting. The hardwood floor was bare, as were the white walls. An eight-foot-long folding table stood against the right-hand wall. On it were jars containing brushes and water, tubes of paint, several photographs of people in Amish garb, a page torn from a magazine showing a customized