Read Online In the Shadow of Blackbirds by Cat Winters - Free Book Online Page B

you’re deeply in love with that boy, but you need to keep in mind you’re still so very young. And … he might never come home.”
    “I already know that.” I pulled my hand away from her. “Why would you remind me of such a thing?”
    “Because every time his name comes up in conversation, your eyes brighten like he’s about to walk into the room. And now you’re hanging his photos on the wall and further surrounding yourself with him. Did he even ask you to wait for him?”
    “He said I didn’t have to wait unless I wanted to. He doesn’t want me to waste my life worrying about him.”
    “Oh.” She sounded surprised. “Well … that was kind of him.”
    “He’s a kind person.”
    She took my hand again and cradled it in her calloused palm. “If he urged you to be free, then let him go. Don’t waste your youth wondering if a boy from your past will ever return to you.”
    My throat itched with the threat of tears. “I don’t think you fully comprehend how much Stephen and I mean to each other.”
    “Mary—”
    “Did I ever tell you how we became friends?”
    Her hazel eyes softened behind her glasses. “No, I don’t think you did.”
    “I was eight at the time, and he wasn’t yet ten. I’d seen him at school before, but he was always just a nice, quiet boy with an interesting last name, and I mainly played with girls. This one day, though, he brought this little Brownie pocket camera to school.” I used my hands to demonstrate the camera’s width, about eight inches. “It was just a small one with a beautiful deep-red bellows and an imitation leather covering. I was walking home with my friend Nell and two other girls, and I saw him in the distance, taking pictures of a tabby cat lying on the steps of an old church. Well”—my shoulders tensed at the ensuing memory—“these older boys swaggered up to him and teased him about being Julius’s sissy brother. They grabbed his camera and threw it onto the sidewalk. I heard a terrible crack and watched pieces scatter across the cement. And then those boys shoved him in the shoulder and walked away.”
    Aunt Eva cringed. “I’m sure their father was furious that a camera got broken.”
    “That’s what Stephen shouted after them. He said, ‘My father’s going to call the cops on all of you,’ and then he added some colorful curse words I’d never heard come out of a nice boy’s mouth before. I told my friends to go on home, and then I joined him to help find all the lost pieces. Some screwshad come loose, and part of the wood casing had split apart beneath the fake leather. Stephen said I wouldn’t be able to help him because I was a girl, but I sat right down on the steps of that church and screwed everything back in place with a little spectacle repair kit Dad had given me. I also pulled my ribbon out of my hair and wrapped up the cracked body to avoid any further damage before he could glue the wood back together at home.”
    “Ah, yes.” Aunt Eva nodded. “Wasn’t that around the time Uncle Lars decided to buy you a larger tool kit?”
    “I think so.”
    A smile lit her face. “I’d forgotten all about that.”
    “So there I was,” I continued, “piecing Stephen’s camera together like a puzzle, fastening the nickel lens board back in place, chatting about the book poking out of his satchel—Jack London’s
White Fang.
And all the while Stephen stared at me as if I were something magical. Not the ugly way other people sometimes stare at me, like I’m a circus freak. But with respect and recognition, like he was meeting someone in a foreign country who spoke his language when no one else could. That’s how it’s been between us ever since. We understand each other, even when we astound each other.”
    Her eyes dampened. “I just don’t want you to get hurt. I hope you’ll be able to move on and find other things in life that make you happy.”
    “Just let me keep hope in my heart for him for now, all right? Let me