Nightingale by Amy Lukavics

Author:Amy Lukavics
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2018-07-18T18:57:59+00:00

days past

What followed was a rush of pure and total agony. June felt everyone’s eyes on her, studying her quizzically. Maybe if she was very, very careful about how she handled this, it could still work somehow. Maybe if she convinced them to let her go...

“What do you mean the airport?” Mom asked, confused. “June’s never even been on an airplane before.”

June returned Fred’s stare, narrowing her eyes in a way that she hoped told him how much she despised what he’d done. If he’d just kept his stupid mouth shut, if he’d tried to pull June aside privately and let her explain before telling their parents, if he’d taken two goddamn seconds to realize that letting her go would have meant giving himself all the space in the world to be the favorite child...

“I haven’t,” June said. Careful, careful. “But I’ll be getting on one tomorrow.”

“But to where?” Mom wailed at the same time that Dad yelled, “Over my dead body!”

The lines beneath June’s eyes burned and burned. “I applied for a scholarship,” she started. “For a—”

“College?” Dad roared, throwing his glass down, which landed with a heavy thud on the carpet. “You were going to disappear to college without thinking to talk to your Mom or me about it? I already told you, June, you don’t need college. You have no use for it!”

“No, it wasn’t—” June tried to correct, but was cut off again when Dad went on a rampage about honor and respect and the fact that June totally lacked either of those things (“Either of them!”). In her mind, there was a curious tingling feeling, like a hand made of bees had come down slowly to rest over the soft, pulsing tissues of her brain.

The very air in the house smelled different. She was suddenly aware of the stars in the sky on the other side of her ceiling. She just as suddenly realized that she wasn’t going to be going to New York after all.

She would not be living in a retreat cottage, drinking and napping and going for walks, away from all the stupid little people in her stupid little life. She would not be finishing her book late one night, would not cry and dance and lie on her roof until the sun came up. She would not be meeting anyone who knew how to go about getting published.

“You were going to disappear?” Mom repeated clumsily, grasping to understand the concept. Just moments ago her drunken state had given her pep, but now it weighed her down, made her mouth hang open, made her face pitiful and ugly. “June Ellen Hardie.”

“It would have been okay,” June said and realized that she had been crying for a long time, her cheeks cold and soaked. “I would have come back.”

“How dare you?” Dad asked and went across the room with a sudden movement that made her jump. “Robert didn’t know about your plans, did he? He would have lost you just like the rest of us.

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