One Mountain Away Read Online Free Page A

wasn’t paying attention. Edna was telling us about a movie she saw on television. Where’s Mom?”
    “Making dinner. She’s teaching a class tonight, so you’ll have me all to yourself.”
    “Cool!” Maddie’s blue eyes danced. “You’re eating with us, too?”
    “I even brought dessert.”
    “Cookies?”
    “Chocolate chip.”
    Maddie yelled goodbye to the other children. Then she waved at Samantha, who glanced up as if she’d just realized Maddie was there and smiled in response.
    As they crossed the park they chatted about school. Although she was ten, Maddie was only in fourth grade, which wasn’t uncommon. Parents often held children with summer birthdays back, even if they were officially able to start school a year earlier. But Taylor, Ethan’s daughter, had decided Maddie should start later because, among other things, she had been more than two months premature at birth.
    The street where Taylor and Maddie lived was eclectic, modest one-story homes mixed with more expansive ones. The architectural styles were eclectic, too, and it pleased Ethan, an architect himself, that the homes weren’t cookie-cutter copies. Most were well taken care of, but some, particularly the obvious rentals, needed paint or simple landscaping.
    Taylor’s own landlord was, for the most part, invisible, because Taylor only contacted him when something major needed repair. He, in return, never asked for an increase in her modest rent. Ethan hoped nothing changed in the near future. The house spelled independence, something Taylor badly needed.
    They were still two houses away when he smelled charcoal. They cut across Taylor’s yard, bordered with swaths of daffodils and grape hyacinth in full bloom, and rounded the house. His daughter was just putting burgers on the grill in the center of a postage-stamp patio, paved in salvaged flagstone she and Maddie had laid themselves. A confirmed vegetarian, she’d fashioned the burgers from black beans and quite possibly baked the buns herself. They would be delicious, he knew, but as he smacked his lips in appreciation, he would still think longingly of USDA prime.
    “Hey, sweetie,” Taylor called to her daughter. “Can you get the salad out of the fridge? Just put it on the picnic table. Then get the lemonade. These will only take a few minutes on each side.”
    Maddie grumbled, more as if it was expected than with conviction, and climbed the back steps.
    “She do okay?” Taylor asked softly.
    Before he spoke Ethan took a moment to admire his daughter. Taylor was medium height and deceptively slender, deceptive because the narrow hips and long legs didn’t project the strength within. She wore her dark brown hair as short as a boy’s, but cut in feminine wisps around her face and nape. The cut emphasized heavily lashed brown eyes, which were a mirror of his own, and the delicate lips of her mother. She was already dressed to teach her yoga class in a green tank top covered with a gauzy scoop-necked shirt and leggings. She wore no jewelry except gold hoop earrings. Taylor spent little time on her appearance, but the effect was striking, anyway.
    “She was up at the top of the jungle gym when I got there,” he said. “But Sam had an eye on her. You don’t think Maddie knows Sam’s there to watch out for her?”
    “She knows, but it’s the kind of world where parents have to keep an eye on their kids, isn’t it?”
    “Did you tell me Sam’s looking for a new job?”
    “And she got one. She’s so excited. She wanted something where she could have a bigger impact on patient care, and now she’ll be the nursing supervisor at a maternal health clinic. She’s the kind of person I wanted watching over me when I was pregnant with Maddie,” Taylor said.
    “The way she was watching over her today.”
    Taylor lowered her voice to match his. “There are only so many excuses I can invent to go to the park myself. And she’s been free of heavy-duty seizures for three full