The Wild Truth by Carine McCandless

Author:Carine McCandless [McCandless, Carine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2014-11-11T00:00:00+00:00

THE NEXT MORNING the poster boards were replaced with fine china and fresh linens. My siblings and their spouses remained at the town house with Fish and me. We passed the scrambled eggs, toast, and bacon in silence. Fresh fruit and pastries were piled up on silver trays. It felt wrong to have this abundance of food traveling across the same surface that twelve hours earlier had displayed images of my brother slowly starving to death.

Mom didn’t eat much. She stared at the plate in front of her and scattered the food around the edges.

“I think the reception went very well,” she said softly.

“Absolutely, Billie,” Dad concurred.

“Everyone was so kind and forgiving of Chris for what he’s done to this family,” she continued.

“Excuse me?” I about choked on my eggs. “What did you just say?”

My mother’s eyes, wide and hurt, met mine. She was expecting pity. The compassion I felt the day before evaporated.

I looked straight back at her and sternly asked, “Do you want to talk about why he left?” Then I turned to my dad. “Do you?”

I knew my siblings were willing to have the conversation. That didn’t mean we wanted to. We felt weakened, exhausted—sad for Billie and Walt, and for ourselves—but we all sat up to attention, ready to defend our fallen comrade if necessary.

Mom didn’t say anything. She just looked down and continued moving her food around on the plate. Dad acted as if he hadn’t heard. There would be no battle today. The table fell silent again.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.