Haven Lake by Holly Robinson

Author:Holly Robinson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2015-03-23T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

“A meatless meal to pay penance for our bloody crime,” Liz said, making Hannah laugh, though she still felt wobbly after giving each lamb one last good-bye pat on the head.

It was two days after Dylan’s accident, and Liz had taken the day off from school to help Hannah truck the rams—all except Casper, left behind to peacefully munch hay in a stall next to the llama’s because of his splinted leg—to the broker in Vermont. The broker’s farm was on the outskirts of Burlington, Vermont, where surprisingly robust communities of Africans and Eastern Europeans created a brisk demand for lamb meat.

They left right after morning barn chores and made the trip in less than three hours. Both of them were starving by the time they dropped off the lambs, so they drove straight to their favorite vegetarian restaurant in Burlington and ordered grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches on thick homemade wheat bread.

Hannah might as well have been eating sawdust. She was still feeling bad about dropping the lambs off to be butchered—she went through this every year, but it didn’t get any easier—and she was worried about Dylan. No word from Sydney, but that was no surprise. Sydney seldom called and she had a lot on her plate right now. Hannah had tried calling Dylan’s cell number twice—she discovered it still on her own phone from the night Dylan had called to have her pick him up when he was hitchhiking—but he wasn’t answering. Maybe Gary had carried through on his threat to ban all of Dylan’s electronic devices and now the poor kid was cut off from his friends.

Not that he seemed to have many.

Hannah took another bite of sandwich and chewed too fast, biting the inside of her cheek in her hurry to banish this surprising surge of mother worry, something she’d never expected to experience again after Sydney reached adulthood. But motherhood was a chronic illness, like arthritis or Lyme disease: it could flare up and debilitate you when you least expected.

For instance, one look at Sydney curled up in that hospital chair, her ropes of blond hair in a tangled mess around her shoulders like some crazy sea creature, had brought such a gut punch of emotion that Hannah had to turn away. Now she was fretting over Dylan.

So pointless! Dylan wasn’t even her own blood. Who knew if Sydney would even stay with Gary? Dylan might vanish from Sydney’s life and from Hannah’s, too. That’s how it was with relationships these days.

The weather had turned warm enough that she and Liz wrapped their sweatshirts around their waists after lunch as they hiked down to Lake Champlain’s shoreline. Burlington, home of the University of Vermont, was buzzing with angsty teenagers and twentysomethings zipping around on skateboards and bikes, passing joints in the park, tossing Frisbees, or bouncing Hacky Sacks on their knees. Sunbathers were stretched out on towels anywhere there was grass and sometimes even in places where it was just cement.

Hannah could remember doing the same her freshman year of college.

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