Catch & Release Read Online Free

pulled-flat smile. Odd’s little dog runs back and forth, but it doesn’t chase the car down the driveway as we pull out.
    I turn my head a little so I can see my mom in the rearview mirror. She’s just standing there like a lawn ornament. Beside her, on the porch, I see I forgot to grab the little blue cooler full of peanut butter and iced tea. I’m on my own. I realize this is the first time I’ve been more than a hundred yards away from Mom since I left the hospital.
    Bye, Mom.
    Â 

    The driver calls the tune on the radio. No argument there. Just like there is no argument about who has to open the gate.
    There are rules. There is an etiquette. The driver does not open the gate. The other person does—even if the other person is an eighty-six-pound pregnant granny and the gate is one of those half-assed contraptions made out of three strands of barbwire and a couple of unpeeled twisty lodgepoles. It’s kind of hilarious: the same guy who makes a double-quick step to open the door of the Loaf’n’Jug for a stranger will sit and wait for his girlfriend to drag a gate open and closed on the way to a fishing spot. At least that’s my experience when I was Bridger Morgan’s girlfriend. It’s just the way of it.
    The gate question isn’t really in play at the moment because we are enjoying a little wide-open blacktop. It could all be good but, sadly, the driver calls the tune even on the interstate. Odd reaches over and there is about fifteen seconds of serious godly talk . . . static . . . some South-will-rise-again twang . . . static, and he settles on—I wish I brought my MP3 player, what was I thinking?—local sports talk.
    â€œMy brother—he’s on two hours a day,” says Odd.
    â€œ. . . lost just two games last year, both of them against state champion . . .” says the radio.
    â€œYour brother?”
    â€œThis is his show.”
    â€œ. . . . returns a wealth of talent on both sides of the ball . . .” says the radio.
    â€œI thought your brother sold equipment at your dad’s . . .”
    â€œTsst. I wanna hear this,” says Odd and cranks up the volume. Well that’s my cue. It isn’t essential that I know about Odd’s brother, who I thought sold combines and lawn tractors. I don’t really care. I was just pretending to care because pretending to care is what a nice girl does in a conversation. If that’s not required, hey! I’m warm. I’m in a car with cushy deluxe seats. I can feel the velvety upholstery on my pretty cheek. I shut my eyes. My eye. The velvet carries a whiff of old happiness, of nickels and vanilla perfume and cigarette crumbs like the inside of an old woman’s purse. I go to sleep.
    Â 

    The crunch of gravel under the tires wakes me up.
    â€œWhere are we?” I’m confused. It doesn’t look like a fishing access.
    â€œPrairie dog town,” says Odd.
    â€œYou miss the turnoff for the fishing access?”
    â€œHaven’t come to it yet.”
    OK. I’ll bite. “Where are we going?”
    â€œHole below the Natural Bridge on the Boulder.”
    â€œUmm . . . why?” It’s a long way to drive to go fishing. There are easier places. We must have driven past a bunch of them already.
    â€œWhy not? You got a better idea?”
    I got nothing.
    â€œCome on Polly, let’s see us some doggies,” says Odd, and he pivots around and pushes himself out of the driver’s seat. There is a technique to getting out, I see. Odd has been developing coping skills and new strategies for his new condition. I step out too, into the bright light and dust of the prairie dog town. The wind is blowing the grit around. I stand beside the big interpretive sign like they always have at the state parks, which explains prairie dogs are an endangered species. I’m not really interested in what it says, but it cuts the wind.
    â€œThese guys were