Read Online Flowers by Scott Nicholson - Free Book Online

anyway? You’d think the longer they lived, the more they should realize that time doesn’t last forever. And meanwhile, Randy was all smiles with Beth and Sue Ellen.
    "There’s a cloud, Mom," Wendy said, trying to stifle the hope in her voice.
    Mom squinted, now that the boy who saw fire was putting the sun to bed and the sky was orange in the west. A lot of the March storms arose as the night came, and that was almost not so bad, because then Wendy could push the air out of her lungs and inhale through her nose and smell the first sprinkles and the thirsty flowers and the freshly-plowed gardens and the silver wetness of clouds.
    And, best of all, when the storms came on fast, Wendy could just throw all her breath at the sky and be done with it.
    "I don’t think that’s a cloud," Mom said.
    "Please let it be a cloud."
    The boards of the porch trembled slightly, or at least Wendy thought so. "Aha. Mister Thunder, coming this way."
    "I believe that was a truck, honey."
    The air grew heavier in Wendy’s lungs. She might be fifteen before the next storm. Why, Beth or Sue Ellen would be practically married to Randy before Wendy even got to meet him.
    Mom had been married once. It was something Mom didn’t like to talk about. But why should Wendy be the only one who was uncomfortable?
    "What happened to Daddy?" Wendy asked, since it looked like they would be in for a long wait and Mom would have to come up with another creative lie.
    Mom sighed and almost stirred a small breeze, but her lungs were too soft, too thin and weak. "Maybe you’re old enough for me to tell you the truth."
    "I’m almost fifteen."
    "Almost fourteen-and-a-half, you mean."
    "Same thing."
    "Don’t be in such a hurry to get old, Wendy. I know all your friends make a big deal—"
    "Friends? I don’t have friends. I have stupid air in my lungs because everybody thinks the world needs wind. Well, whoop-de-doo, let the flags go limp for all I care." "That’s the same thing I said, back before I met your father."
    Wendy had seen pictures of him, a sullen, gray man with small eyes. Mom, at different times, had said he was a sailor, a carpenter, a preacher, and a bank robber. Wendy had no idea which of those were meant as jokes, because Mom was always sad when she talked about the man in the pictures.
    "He left us, didn’t he?" Wendy said.
    Mom looked off toward the setting sun. Somewhere the fingers of the night maker were preparing to cast a black sheet over the sky. A star shaker had dashed the first tiny dots of light against the darkness. The moon girl was tugging the greenish-white crescent up the opposite horizon from the sunset. This would be a perfect night, if not for Wendy having to hold her breath and Mom turning so quiet and serious.
    "He left me," Mom said. "I don’t think he ever left you."
    Left. Like Wendy would leave all this blowing-the-wind business in a heartbeat. "Didn’t he love us?"
    "Love comes in many ways, sweetheart. You’ll have to find that out the hard way. I could tell you and tell you, but I don’t even know half of the ways and I’m probably wrong about the half I do know."
    "So he loved you enough to have me, but not enough to stay."
    "He was a good man. But he was just that—a man. He could handle the good times, but responsibility scares even the best of them."
    "You mean he left because you were a wind girl?"
    "We were different. There’s no plainer way to say it than that."
    "Can’t people love people who are different?"
    "I think it’s happened before. Mrs. Seaver next doorlikes cats and puzzles and Agatha Christie, while Mr. Seaver likes snakes and football and Stephen King. But it’s different when the two different people are both of the same kind. Makers and people don’t seem to mix too well."
    Did that mean Wendy could never even think about kissing Randy? Or any of the boys she knew? Did this wind business have ways of hurting that even love hadn’t invented yet? If she had to give up kissing