Read Online The Care and Feeding of Griffins by R. Lee Smith - Free Book Online

please!” her mom said, loudly enough to make the surrounding tables fall silent.  “You haven’t thought this through!”
    “ Yes, she has.”  Rhiannon was staring at her with an expression that was almost horror.  “She’s really going.”
    “ I have to do this,” Taryn said helplessly.  “I know it’s sudden, but this is when it has to be.  I…I don’t know how long I’ll be gone.”  Tears pricked at her eyes and she stared down at the tabletop.  “A few years at least.”
    “ Years?” her mother gasped.
    Her father was still perfectly silent.
    Taryn wiped her eyes and dug in her pocket for a folded sheet of paper.  “Mail is going to be pretty sketchy,” she said.  “But I have someone who’ll come by once in a while and deliver stuff.  This is the address for a P.O. Box for the Life Corps office up in Washington.  You send any letters or stuff to me care of them and I’ll get it.  Eventually.  Just, um, you know, nothing perishable or heavy.  No…reverse combine engines or anything.”
    “ Oh baby.”  Her mom began to cry.
    Taryn pushed the paper out into the middle of the table and then immediately wished she hadn ’t let it go just yet.  She needed something in her hands for this part.  She picked up her baked potato and gripped it tightly.  “This…this could be a little dangerous,” she began.
    Her mother ’s tears were nearly soundless, but the table was shaking with the force of them.  Her father put his arm around his wife’s shoulders, but he never took his eyes off Taryn.  His expression was unreadable.  Rhiannon was still staring at her, pale and silent.  She was leaving these people, and she was hurting them first.  Taryn tried to think of some way to prepare them for some very bad possibilities, but in the end, she only dropped her eyes and moved on.
    “ I bought a Polaroid camera, so I’ll send you lots of pictures,” she said.  She dragged her gaze up, tears spilling down her cheeks.  “Please, don’t be mad at me.”
    “ We’re not angry, Taryn,” her father said.  “But I’d be lying if I said we were happy.”
    “ This isn’t like you,” whispered Rhiannon.  There was a distance in her voice, now and for the first time, and that hurt worse than anything Taryn could have imagined.  They’d always been so close.  They’d always told each other everything.  The lie that now lay between them was suffocating.
    “ I know, but I have to do it,” Taryn said. She couldn’t meet her little sister’s eyes. “And I have to do it now.  I’m sorry.  I hate springing it on you like this.”
    “ Are you in trouble?” her father asked quietly.  “Are you running away?”
    She looked at him, startled at first and then helplessly loving him.  “No, Dad,” she said.  She thought of Aisling and smiled through her tears.  “But I suddenly have a chance to do something so wonderful and so huge that I can’t say no.  I just can’t.  I don’t want to hurt you.  I don’t even want to leave, but I will.  Because I have to go.  I have to help and this is the only way.”
    Her eyes pulled toward her car, to the precious thing hidden in the backseat, and her smile lingered.  “I wish I could think of something to say to convince you,” she said.  “I think it’s like falling in love or dying.  Sometimes you don’t want to, but when it happens, you have to go where it takes you.  And I have to go.”
    Silence.  When she turned around, she saw her family looking back at her without understanding, but with a kind of acceptance.
    “You’ll write,” her mother said, and Taryn knew it was okay.
    “ As often as I can.  You’ll probably get them all at once, but I’ll write every chance I get.”
    Her father ’s hand closed over hers and squeezed.  “I think if I knew the whole story here, I’d be very proud of you,” he said softly.  He reached under the collar of his shirt for a silver chain, and the St.