The Plum Tree by Wiseman Ellen Marie

Author:Wiseman, Ellen Marie [Wiseman, Ellen Marie]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corp
Published: 2012-12-24T08:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 20

The next morning, Christine pulled herself from bed and looked out her bedroom window, her desperate frame of mind mirrored by the cloud-filled sky and heavy rain. The weather looked like it had settled in for the rest of the day. She thought about crawling back under the covers, but knew her restless mind wouldn’t allow her to go back to sleep.

Even the prospect of seeing Isaac couldn’t brighten her mood. Last night, running away with him had seemed like the right thing to do. Escaping together had seemed romantic and adventurous, the two of them sleeping in forests and the haylofts of barns, until they were free in another country. But this morning it felt utterly terrifying, and worse yet, downright foolish. The Nazis hadn’t found him in the attic; maybe he should just stay there. If he and Christine left, who knew what would happen? Where would they get food? What if they were caught? They’d be shot or sent to a camp like the one Isaac had told her about.

Once she got dressed, she felt like she was moving at high speed, her nerves frayed, dried up, and coarse, like the shavings left behind after a person raked their nails across a chalkboard. Panic wound itself around the knot of fear and grief in the pit of her stomach, like something that needed to be thrown up in a toilet.

No one else was up, and the house was quiet. She thought about looking in her brothers’ schoolbooks for a map, but decided fresh air would do her good. Maybe it would clear her head. Whether escaping seemed like a good idea right now or not, if she was going to run away with Isaac, she needed to be able to think straight.

She grabbed a basket from the kitchen and went out to the henhouse. By the time she opened the latch on the coop, the downpour had let up, reduced to an intermittent ping-ping on the metal roof from water dripping off the trees. It was past sunrise, but even the chickens didn’t want to come out from their dry roosts. When she reached for their eggs, the birds squawked and stood up, ready to defend themselves from the intrusion. An old, skinny hen pecked at her hand, pinching the skin. Just this slight provocation was enough to make her cry—not that it really hurt, but it took only this minor fracture in the shell of her fragile state to spring the leak that allowed every other pain to find its way to the surface and overflow.

She left the coop and sat down on the back stoop, setting the basket of eggs at her feet, and let her pent-up emotions take over. A flood spilled from her eyes, and she sobbed out loud, remembering her father and Opa. She wept for Isaac and his lost family, her nose running as she thought about all the people who were dying because of this war. She was tired

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