The Girl From Blind River
Page 25
She pulled an envelope out of her backpack and handed it to him. “Can you get this to my uncle?”
Garcia opened the envelope, looked through the stack of postcards. “What’s this?”
“They’re from a guy who used to be his friend. He likes to look through them at night.” She imagined Loyal sitting in a small cell thumbing through the cards, maybe trading them one by one for a pack of smokes or a bar of soap.
Garcia stuffed them into his coat pocket. “I’ll get them to him, Little Miss Sunshine.”
She walked toward the woods.
“You’re not like them, you know. Your mother or your uncle,” he yelled as she walked away. “Be your own girl, Jamie Elders.”
A plume of smoke snaked above the tree line where the tracks ran through the woods and she headed toward it. She’d follow the tracks back to Blind River to catch the late train. By midnight she’d be on her way. Over to the coast then south, all the way to Florida, to Jacksonville, and further. Tampa, then Fort Lauderdale.
She looked back once. Across the open space, Garcia was talking into his phone. Imagining the distance she could travel in a few days caused an unexpected lightness in her chest. What if she was different than them? What if she could shed the past? What if she had her own fate, separate and unknowable?
Low on the blue horizon, wild geese flew across the sun. What if there really was something better waiting for her; what if she was moving toward it right now? Pines swayed in the breeze overhead and sunlight slipped through the branches. In the distance, the southbound train approached with a gathering rumble. Soon it would come booming around the bend, shattering the afternoon with its inevitable thunder, oblivious and unyielding, harsh and exciting. Charging the air with hope.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Gale Massey was born on the west coast of Florida. A master’s level graduate of Georgia State University, she has received scholarships and fellowships at The Sewanee Writers’ Conference and Writers in Paradise. Her flash fiction story The Train Runner was nominated for a Pushcart. She lives in St. Petersburg, FL with her family. The Girl From Blind River is her debut novel.
This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, organizations, places and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real or actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 by Gale Massey.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crooked Lane Books, an imprint of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.
Crooked Lane Books and its logo are trademarks of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.
Library of Congress Catalog-in-Publication data available upon request.
ISBN (hardcover): 978-1-68331-640-4
ISBN (ePub): 978-1-68331-641-1
ISBN (ePDF): 978-1-68331-642-8
Cover design by Melanie Sun.
Printed in the United States.
www.crookedlanebooks.com
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First Edition: July 2018
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