The Mountains Bow Down by Sibella Giorello

Author:Sibella Giorello
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2011-02-06T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty

I swallowed, trying to breathe. The wind was gusting in bursts of iced air and the people who crowded the deck rail looked like a wall of parkas. I stared at them because I still couldn’t look at Jack.

“I need to find my family.” I tried to sound calm.

Jack cleared his throat. “Yeah, and I should find Milo.” He waited. “Check back in, what, an hour?”

I nodded, eyes still averted, and began walking farther back toward the aft. The ship was retracing its path down Tracy Arm, and as I walked in the opposite direction, the mountain walls appeared to stand still, as if I were treading ground. I walked faster, then broke into a run, trying to shatter that feeling of being stuck.

When I ran inside the Salt Spray restaurant, I was ahead of the crowd and took a table by the window, waiting for my mom and Aunt Charlotte with a heart that refused to quit pounding.

And it wasn’t pounding from the run, that much I realized.

Minutes later they arrived—with Claire. There was no getting away from her, I realized. My mom’s dark curls looked flumed from the wind.

“Where are you sitting?” she asked, staring at the three chairs.

“I have to run an errand. Go ahead and start without me.”

I was holding the chair that had the best view, holding it for my mom, but Claire plopped into it.

“Hey, get a load of that view,” she said. “I can do some serious channeling here.”

I clenched my teeth, resisting the temptation to tip the chair over.

“You’re not eating breakfast?” my mother asked. Though her cheeks were pinked by the wind, she looked drained. Almost haggard.

“I’ll be right back,” I said. “Eat a good breakfast and save me something good.”

Claire nodded. “You’ve got to go hunt down whoever killed—”

“Claire!” Aunt Charlotte glared at her.

My mother was glancing among us. Her expression was like somebody receiving two different sets of directions and uncertain which to follow. My aunt suddenly softened her voice.

“Claire, I think they’re making those omelets again.”

“Hot diggity.” Claire pushed back the chair and shot toward the buffet line.

While my mother watched her go, I mouthed a silent thank-you to my aunt, who nodded back. I held another chair out, waiting for my mom to sit. Her eyes had an almost dull expression, something remote, unreachable, and I realized another glacier was at work. This one was inside her mind, the ice smothering reality and crushing the truth, pulverizing joy and spewing forth a silt that churned in her hazel eyes. My father had once warned me of these moments. “She might not get better, Raleigh. She might get worse.”

“Then what?” I had asked.

“Then we’ll get better at loving her.”

But now “we” didn’t exist. My dad was gone. And my sister was no help. It was just me, and I was inadequate. So very inadequate. As she took her seat, she turned away from the view, gazing down at the table. I leaned over her dark hair, kissing her cheek, feeling her skin cooled by the wind.

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