Stolen Read Online Free Page B

saw the heron flying toward the lake, but it was just as likely the bird had simply flown over the island after hunting along the shore. From this vantage point Bree could keep an eye on both water sources.
    She’d sat here with Lock many times over, and with her mother only once. With Lock, it was always a thing to do to kill time. After fishing and hunting, and before someone could saddle another chore onto their backs, they’d sneak into the woods and climb Crest, then sit and stare at the endless stretch of ocean beyond Saltwater in complete silence. They didn’t need words, Lock and Bree.
    The first and only time she’d hiked Crest with her mother, it had been an anniversary of her father’s Snatching. They’d both needed a distraction, and so Bree showed her mother the rough path she’d carved out with Lock. She was only eight back then, so the passes weren’t as clearly marked and worn as they were now, but her mother had managed better than expected. Who knew a storyteller could have such nimble limbs?
    When they reached the summit, Bree’s mother had stood dangerously close to the edge, one hand gripping the tree that grew from the rock, the other held out at her side.
    “Look at that lake,” she’d said. “It almost looks close enough to dive into.”
    It was not.
    “Maybe I could fly there, like a bird.”
    The woman let go of the tree and spread both arms like she had wings. Her toes flirted with the edge.
    “Ma?” Bree had said, voice cracking.
    “I’m tired, Brianna. I’m tired of feeling empty and tired of living without him.”
    “Without Pa?”
    She’d nodded. “I’m no one alone. He carried so much of me. He was me.”
    Bree didn’t understand. Her mother was her mother. Her father was her father. They were two people.
    “I really feel like I could fly today.”
    Bree watched her mother lift a foot.
    “What about me?” Bree asked.
    “What about you?”
    Bree’s bottom lip quivered. “You can’t fly. You’re not a bird. And then what about me?”
    “You’re stubborn as a weed, Brianna. You don’t need anyone.”
    “You’re my mother!” Bree had shouted. “It doesn’t matter if I need you or not; you’re supposed to be here. You’re not supposed to fly away.”
    Her mother looked in a trance, though. Her fingers moved with the wind, her chin careened forward. Bree felt her heart breaking—a crack in the center of her chest, a split that seemed to grow, screaming, You’re not enough, you’re not the person who makes her days worth living .
    She grabbed her mother’s wrist and pulled her away from the edge. She might have called the woman selfish. Bree couldn’t remember now. Whatever she’d said, the words had jolted her mother to reality, or maybe she was suddenly too scared or ashamed. Maybe she would have done it at a later date. But that day, at Bree’s touch, the woman’s eyes cleared. She looked at Bree like she was seeing her for the first time and collapsed at her knees, pulling the girl into her arms.
    “I’m sorry, I’m here,” she whispered into Bree’s hair.
    About a month later she caught a chill and never got better. As Bree watched her mother die, the fight drawn out for weeks, she wondered if she should have let her try to fly. She’d lost her in the end, and it hadn’t even been quick. The thought plagued her during those first months alone, and even after Chelsea took her in that fall.
    Bree relished a long drink from her waterskin, scanned the water, and waited.
    The lake was visited by a few women hauling freshwater into town and a pair of boys who stripped down to their shorts to cool off. Maggie and Ness—at least, Bree assumed it was them—left the stream that fed the lake with clean laundry. The shoreline numbers slowly thinned, men and women coming in for the day, clearing out like the tide, Lock probably among them.
    Late in the afternoon, when Bree was losing all hope and growing rather hungry, a shadow flicked across her