Read Online Cures for Hunger by Deni Béchard - Free Book Online

that it ached.
    â€œWhere?”
    â€œWe’re moving. Just you and me and your brother and sister.”
    â€œWhat about André?” I asked, realizing something terrible was happening to my family, though I had no word for it.
    â€œHe’s staying here.”
    â€œWhen will we come back?”

    The wind gusted in her hair as she stared beyond the smooth surface of the water to the mountain, her expression like my brother’s as we rushed the train track.
    â€œWe’re not coming back,” she said, her voice almost breaking.
    â€œEver?” I didn’t understand. Though I loved the idea of setting out, I couldn’t imagine never seeing the valley again. It was the one place we were sure to return to after our many temporary homes, and I’d never known spring or summer anywhere else. What would we do if we were separated from my father, gone away somewhere strange and new?
    My mother stared off, lips slightly parted so that I thought she might say something else, her eyes narrowed as if to glare past the limits of the sky.
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    The next morning, I checked on the flood. I walked out to where the water began. Beneath the surface, the grass appeared distorted, like the bottom of a swimming pool, undulating. Far off, the red-ribboned tops of a few Christmas trees showed, and then there was simply the smooth surface of the deluge, stretching on toward the mountain.
    I wanted to worry that we were leaving, but it seemed impossible—not just because of the flood, but because my parents often said crazy things that never happened. Besides, just before going to work, my father had made a comment that now obsessed me.
    â€œI bet carp are swimming up from the rivers, right through the fields,” he’d said. “If we take the boat and shine the flashlight in the water, we’ll see them.”
    I couldn’t think of anything but carp—gliding out of the river, nestling in the branches of submerged trees, riding currents through the beams of flashlights.
    The rowboat lay upside down in the shed, and I discussed with my invisible friends whether we should take it and do some exploring. Eleven of them were in agreement, making me suspect that I had eleven invisible friends but maybe only one spirit guide. The guide was concerned. In fact, he sounded a lot like my brother later did.

    â€œWe’re not allowed,” he said.
    â€œCome on. Just for a little while. There are carp out there.”
    â€œNo. We can’t. We’ll get washed away by the river and die.”
    In the past, my father had been more open to ideas like this, but I suspected that convincing him to do something wild might not be as easy as before.
    â€œCan we go out in the boat?” I asked him that evening,
    â€œI’m busy.”
    â€œBut we can see carp.”
    â€œThat’s true,” he said, nodding to himself. “There might be carp out there.”
    I hesitated, knowing what I had to say next.
    â€œDo you think it would be really dangerous?”
    He looked at me and grinned as if he’d just woken up and was himself again, not that person who cared only about his business.
    â€œOkay,” he said, “we can go later on tonight.”
    After dark, the moon shone against the water, turning the flood into a silvery plain. In the rowboat, we crossed the hidden fields of Christmas trees as my brother and I took turns aiming the flashlight through the luminous surface. My father kept letting go of the oars and taking it from us, saying we were using it wrong, but he couldn’t find any carp either.
    As he peered down, we sat on the opposite side, trying to counterbalance. His edge of the boat sank dangerously close to the water, but he didn’t seem to care. Did he know we were leaving him? He didn’t show it. Sitting there, saying nothing, I felt what a relief it would be if the end came now, the three of us in the boat, with no choice but to