Page 5 (2/2)
She was … beautiful
No, divine
No, perfect
His pulse thuh his head Thoughts of surrender Thoughts of co behind her ainst the wall "Just stop talking Just … leave , prison , he stumbled backward and sank blindly down to his cot
Five
Scarlet’s thoughts seethed as she hauled the ear’s yawning doors She’d found her portscreen on the floor of the ship and it was now in her pocket, the ainst her thigh as sheroutine
She was perhapsdistracted, even for aer, so soon after she’d learned that her grandhterimportant
And then there was Roland and Gilles and every other backstabber in Rieux They all believed her grandma was crazy, and that’s what they’d told the police Not that she was thefarmer in the province Not that she made the best éclairs this side of the Garonne River Not that she’d served her country as a ht years, and still wore a medal for honorable service on her favorite checkered kitchen apron
No They’d told the police she was crazy
And now they’d stopped looking for her
Not for long though Her grand to find her if she had to dig up dirt and black fast, sending Scarlet’s elongated shadon the drive Beyond the gravel, the whispering crops of cornstalks and leafy sugar beets stretched out in every direction,up with the first spray of stars A cobblestone house disrupted the view to the west, with ts glowing orange Their only neighbor for miles
For more than half her life, this farm had been Scarlet’s paradise Over the years, she’d fallen in love with it more deeply than she’d known a person could fall in love with land and sky--and she knew her grandh she didn’t like to think of it, she are that someday she would inherit the far old here Happy and content, with perpetual dirt beneath her fingernails and an old house that was in constant need of repair
Happy and content--like her grandmother
She wouldn’t have just left Scarlet knew it
She lugged the crates into the barn, stacking theain torabbed the pail of chicken feed Scarlet walked while she fed, tossing big handfuls of kitchen scraps in her path as the chickens scurried around her ankles
Rounding the corner of the hangar, she halted
A light was on in the house, on the second floor
In her granders The chickens squawked and darted away, before clustering back around the spilled feed
She stepped over the beneath her shoes Her heart elling, bursting, the sprint already s burn as she yanked open the back door She took the stairs two at a tirandrasping the jah the room Every draas pulled out from the dresser, clothes and toiletries had been dumped onto the floor The quilts from the bed were piled haphazardly at its foot, the ital picture fra dark spots on the here the sunlight hadn’t ed to fade the painted plaster
A h a box of her grandmother’s old military unifor his head on the low oak bea
The world spun Scarlet alnize him--it had been years since she’d seen hied A beard was taking over his normally clean-shaven jawline His hair was ht on the other He was pale and gaunt, like he hadn’t had a proper ht jacket to his chest
"What are you doing here?" She surveyed the chaos again, heart still pounding "What are you doing?"
"There’s soh and unused "She’s hidden so" He peered down at the jacket, then tossed it onto the bed Kneeling, he started digging through the box again "I need to find it"
"Find what? What are you talking about?"
"She’s gone," he whispered "She’s not co back She won’t ever know and I … I have to find it I have to knohy"
The sh the air and Scarlet’s heart hardened She didn’t kno he’d found out about his mother’s disappearance, but for him to just assume all hope was lost, so easily, so quickly, and to think he would be entitled to a single thing that belonged to her, after he’d abandoned thele corande to call the police, except she was mad at them too
"Get out! Get out of our house!"
Unfazed, he started to pile the , Scarlet rounded the bed and grabbed his ar to yank him to his feet "Stop it!"
He hissed and fell back onto the old wooden floorboards He scurried away froaze was starkclenched fists on her hips "What’s wrong with your arm?"