Lovely Wild by Megan Hart

Author:Megan Hart [Hart, Megan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Contemporary Women, Literary
ISBN: 9780778316756
Google: VbvSAwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2014-11-25T05:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-NINE

BARE FEET PRESSED the soft grass. Cluck, cluck, clucking chickens scratched and pecked in the yard beyond. Victor, tail spread wide, showed off for her. She would find his feathers in the grass, take them inside. Long and soft and pretty, they would make her a princess.

In the kitchen, Gran offered a plate of bread and jelly and allowed Mari to sit at the table while she talked and talked. Mari didn’t understand what Gran said, her mouth was mushy and mumbly, no teeth and a flapping, slobbery tongue. But Them had come two sleeps ago and so there was food, enough to go around, even with small bits dropped on the floor to satisfy the always begging dogs. After eating, Gran brushed Mari’s hair and washed her face and sent her back outside to play with the new kittens in the barn. That was a good day.

Long, long days of sunshine and freedom. Fresh air that tangled her hair and blushed her cheeks. Running, running, spinning in circles, arms out.

That was her childhood.

There were bad times, too, Mari thinks as she scatters a handful of feed for the chickens Rosie from down the lane is supposed to take care of. She bends to let them peck from her hand. There is one red hen called Sally who will sit on her lap and be petted, if Mari lets her, and after a moment or so, she settles onto the ground. Her clothes will get dirty, but she doesn’t care.

Her childhood was filled with bad times by anyone’s standards. She knows it. Hunger. Fear. Deprivation. Loss.

And yet, back again in the place where she’d been small, Mari only feels content. No carpooling or music lessons or play dates to arrange. No constant blather from the television set. No honking traffic.

Here there is the sound of chuckling water she so longed for. The sigh of breezes in the trees. There is sunshine and the fresh scent of grass and of wildflowers when she goes into the field behind the barn where the weeds have grown high enough to hide her when she crouches.

Here her children don’t spend hours in front of their computers or behind a desk or locked inside the shadows. Now they’ve both gone to wade in the stream, to build a fort from fallen branches. Kendra, who usually clings to her phone like it was going to take her to the prom, left it on the counter this morning. They’ve both gone brown from the sun, lean from activity. Here they are lovely and wild.

When they come down out of the woods, something in their shifting gazes tells her they were not doing what they said they’d been doing, but to ask them would mean she has to confront them about being untruthful. Then there must be punishment and discipline, and right now Mari wants nothing to do with that sort of thing. Instead, she calls to them, her brightest shining stars. Her delight.

She takes their hands and

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