“It’s her.”
“She’s alive?” Angie asked.
“Yes.”
“She’s alive and well?”
Laura didn’t reply. Angie Mitchem began to whimper. The cries burrowed into her ear; she would never get them out.
“Thank you, Laura. Thank you, Jesus.”
“I’m bringing her home.”
Angie blew her nose. “Are you going to write the story? Somebody’s going to write it. I’d like if it was you.”
“I’m going now, Angie. We’ll leave straightaway.”
She placed the receiver in its cradle. It would be a hell of a story. The book advance alone would catapult her wherever she wanted to go. But her dreams, coiled springlike for so long inside her, seemed to have lost their tension. Her hometown was just another brown spot under the same scrubbed blue sky. Was there a place so beautiful it could make her forget?
She doubted it.
Some parts of this story weren’t for telling. They were just for her. They would die with her.
* * *
They packed what things she had, stopped by the second-floor library to see Sister Coleman—who kissed the girl once on the forehead but uttered not a word—and then they were off, bouncing over the rutted trail out of the mountains, racing down the freeway, heading east, and still the girl said nothing. After a while Laura flipped on the radio. Teresa turned the dial back and forth. Sometimes she would land on a radio station and stay for a while, listening. Sometimes she would land on static and listen just the same.
They drove with white noise playing for a spell. As the next town approached, “Silent Night” faded in through the hiss. The girl with one ear leaned forward, transfixed, and closed her eyes.
Laura tried not to stare. Frozen, once again a statue, she was a living memorial to all that had happened, a monument both to life’s misery and to its hidden corners still replete with hope. She was lightning in a bottle. Laura watched the girl out of the corner of her eye and waited for her to move.
“It’s Christmas, you know,” she said.
And the girl nodded.
AUTHOR BIO
J. G. Hetherton was in raised in rural Wisconsin, graduated from Northwestern University, and lived in Chicago for the better part of a decade. Along the way to his first novel, he dabbled in many different day jobs before moving to North Carolina for a girl. They live in Durham, North Carolina with their twin daughters, and when he’s not writing, you can find him on the hiking trail or sitting down with a good book.
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 Grant Hetherton
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): 978-1-68331-617-6
ISBN (ePub): 978-1-68331-618-3
ISBN (ePDF): 978-1-68331-619-0
Cover design by Melanie Sun
Book design by Jennifer Canzone
Printed in the United States.
www.crookedlanebooks.com
Crooked Lane Books
34 West 27th St., 10th Floor
New York, NY 10001
First Edition: June 2018
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