When She Flew Read Online Free

pond.”
    “You were three and a half. And I was there, too, Nina. Whose idea do you think that was? Your father would have rather been . . . I don’t know.”She’d been about to say he would have rather been having brewskies with his buddies.
    “But he was the one with me. He walked with me the whole time I was on the pony, because I was scared it was going to bite me.”
    “Yes, he did. All the way around that little circle.” Jess shook her head and stood to clear the breakfast dishes.
    “Do you have to do that?” Nina’s voice wobbled, and Jess turned to look at her, surprised.
    “What’s the matter? I was just saying you never remem—”
    “Do you have to ruin every happy memory I have?” Nina stood and held her arms out to Teo. “Come on, baby,” she said. “Let’s get ready for the day.”
    Jess felt guilty, of course, and followed her to her room. Once again, she’d done the wrong thing.
    “Nina, come on,” Jess said from the open doorway. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
    Nina kept her eyes averted as she pulled off the boy’s pajamas, saying, “Just forget it,” and Jess wished more than anything that they could forget everything that had ever come between them, but Nina never would.
    Later in the day, Jess stood outside the fence enclosing the old carousel, watching Nina hold Teo on top of a gilded horse. They laughed like drunken chimps as they circled around. They were both petite, with soft honey gold skin, and Nina’s dark hair drifted behind her. Jess’s heart filled at their beauty.
    All the activities Nina had proposed for the day were things Jess had loved doing with her when she was small, but it was as though her daughter had wiped Jess from every happy childhood memory. Jess turned her back on the rickety wooden fence, even though an excited Teo called, “Grammy! Grammy! Look at me!” each time she came into his view.
    She reached into her purse for a tissue, blew her nose, wiped her eyes, and turned around to wave.
    “Hi, hi, hi!” she called. “Hi, sweet boy! Hold on tight!”

2
    T he great blue heron stands three to four and a half feet tall and has a wingspan of up to eighty inches wide, wider than I am tall by eighteen inches. I would like to lie in the wings of a great blue heron, in its downy under feathers, and listen to its heartbeat.
    It has been my dream to see one up close, ever since I first read about them in the Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Western North America at the library. I like to draw herons and other birds, and write poems and stories about them. Birds are such happy things, and so free to flit and glide wherever they want, yet they always return to their nests. Maybe that’s what makes them happy. Great blue herons hardly seem in the category of birds, though. To me they seem more like enchanted creatures waiting for someone to break the spell so they can change back into the princes and princesses they once were.
    Great blue herons inhabit much of North America, but they live in wetlands, not forests, staying near lakes and streams so they can fish. They have been known to eat voles, which is really just a fancy word for mice, but probably only when they can’t eat fish. There are no wetlands in the Joseph Woods, but back when we had our car and we still thought Pater would have a job, we took a drive out to the river one Sunday and roasted hot dogs for lunch. We saw three great blue herons fly over us that day, like magic, like a sign that we were meant to be in Oregon.
    Last year a baby orca and its mother wandered too far upriver from the ocean; we saw the story in The Oregonian . They didn’t know how to get back home. Pater said all the fuss from people and boaters and news helicopters was probably confusing them more. He didn’t say he thought they’d never find their way back, but I know that was what he was thinking. In my mind, I like to think they submerged so no one could see them under all that deep blue, popping up again