Triptych Read Online Free

of the hayloft before dark. The boys from the neighbour’s farm would be by tomorrow afternoon to help Mark pull up the moulding floorboards and replace it; wet hay caused everything else around it to go off, and paradoxically, started fires. It was the MacKinnons who’d bound and stacked the hay before it was properly dried in the first place in their haste to get the work done last year, and their father said they owed.
    The MacKinnons were good for that  — paying back.
    When Mark had disappeared, Evvie washed each dish carefully and stacked them in the plastic drying rack under the window. The sun glanced off the rapidly evaporating water, filling the small kitchen with light. Gwennie tried to grab at a reflection of the sun off Evvie’s watch, patting her fat palms against the wall beside her high chair with futility. They played that game for a while, too, Gwennie laughing, trying to smack the light between her hands or grasp it with fingers still smeared with green paste.
    Evvie moved Gwennie into her carrier at noon and they spent the next hour shuttling baskets, garden tools, water pitchers, a soft, much-gummed plush frog, and a wheelbarrow of fertilizer out to the garden at the bottom of the backyard. It butted right up against the marching line of corn stalks gone golden with the end of summer. That would be Mark’s next task, ploughing under the stripped stalks. The world smelled of clean dark soil, the faint perfume of the apple orchard belonging to their neighbours far upwind, and the crisp lingering after-scent of the morning’s brief hoary dew.
    With Gwennie content with her frog, Evvie bent to her task, old gathering baskets dappled with the brownish and pink stains of many years duty at hand, carefully reaching around the thorny tendrils of the raspberry bushes, plucking the dark fruit away from the leaves and lifting them gently into their new homes to keep her fingers mostly free of sticky juice. She had to reach and stretch carefully so the prickly edeges of the leaves never got to close to Gwennie.
    And then.
    The buzzing sound was soft enough that Evvie didn’t notice it right away. She flapped a glove-clad hand at her ear, hoping it wasn’t a late-season mosquito trying to get in one last meal, or a fly bothering Gwennie. It grew louder, too loud to be an insect, too large. She thought maybe it was Gwennie, making sounds with her chubby baby lips, and Evvie craned her head around to smile at her.
    What she saw was Gwennie looking up, mouth open in awe, wide blue eyes reflecting the sky and…
    The aircraft swooped down so low that Evvie couldn’t deny the urge to duck. It buzzed the top of the corn, sending the crowns of dried seed husks flying in clouds of pellets. The plane turned in midair, belly up like a swimmer at the end of a pool, then waggled and flipped upright with a barrel roll straight out of the movies, sharp nose pointing at them. What the hell kind of plane looks like that? Evvie thought. What aircraft can even manoeuvre like that?
    Something hard and sharp welled against the underside of her ribs.
    She flattened herself against the ground, tugging desperately at the straps of the carrier, wriggling to pull Gwennie around, shield her under her body as the craft came at them again. Thoughts of sprays of bullets and missiles pressed fervidly against Evvie’s forehead, and she felt her face get hot, heard Gwennie squeal. Blood pounded against Evvie’s skin, and she could taste her heart in the back of her throat.
    What the hell was happening?
    The world erupted in a bang.
    Evvie squeezed her eyes shut, but she could hear the skidding slide of the aircraft digging into the turf of the backyard, some sort of scream, the shrill protest of metal being bent away. There was a vicious tug on the baby carrier and she felt the straps tear. It took Gwennie, ripped her out of the carrier, a foot on the strap, slamming Evvie’s chest back into the ground.
    “Gwennie!” Evvie