Read Online Liberty Street by Dianne Warren - Free Book Online Page A

lake and big brown fish nestled there with their fins rippling and minnows everywhere—hundreds of them—andshe thinks she’s living in a fish world, and they don’t seem to mind. A brown duck comes close with six ducklings peeping and darting around like water bugs, and they don’t seem to mind her being there either. Her legs dangle down into the clear water, and when she wriggles her toes or kicks her feet, the fish move lazily along the bottom right underneath her, their bodies curving one way and then the other, and they give not one sign that they think Frances shouldn’t be there, or that they are afraid of her.
    Then a man and woman in a canoe come along and ruin everything. They get excited when they see her, and the man wants her to come with them in the canoe, but she says no thank you, even though she is beginning to shiver, and the closer the man and woman come in the canoe, the more Frances wishes she were back on shore because now the chills are going right down to her toes dangling in the water. The woman suggests they tow her back to shore and Frances thinks about that and then nods. She lets the man wrap a rope around the ring, and the woman holds the end of it while the man paddles. They paddle back to the beach, staying close to the shore, while Frances hangs on to the ring. She points to the blanket where she’d been sitting with her mother, who still isn’t there. The woman watches Frances the whole time, as though they might lose her. Just before they get to shore, she takes out a camera and snaps Frances’s picture. “Smile,” she says.
    The man beaches the canoe and the woman hands him the rope, and he hauls Frances to the water’s edge. Once she’s on land, she drops the ring in the sand and heads for the blanket, shivering so badly she can hardly hold herself up. She wonders why her mother isn’t back yet.
    The couple follow her to the blanket, where they bothstand looking confused until the man asks, “Where are your parents, little girl?”
    â€œMy mother is here somewhere,” Frances says.
    â€œHeavens, your lips are blue,” the woman says.
    They still look like they don’t know what to do. Frances wants them go away. She sits down and wraps herself up in the blanket, playing cards and all. “My mother’s car is just up there,” she says. “The blue-and-white one. She won it at the fair. You don’t have to wait. She’ll be right back.”
    The couple finally leave her alone after making her promise she won’t go in the water again (not a chance, she’s too cold), and they get in their canoe and paddle away, taking the ring with them. Frances is glad when the canoe is around the point and she can’t see it anymore.
    Then her mother steps out of the trees with another woman and two teenage girls, and she sees Frances wrapped up on the beach. “Thank God,” the other woman says. Then she says, “We’ll tell the others,” and she and the teenagers leave and walk back toward the picnic tables. Through the trees, Frances hears her call, “We found her.”
    After Frances’s mother gets over being relieved, it becomes clear just how mad she is, and also how embarrassed, because she’d had to ask people to help her look.
    â€œWhere were you?” she asks. “You weren’t at the playground. We checked the water. I thought you’d got lost in the bush.”
    Frances says she went for a ride with a man in a canoe. She doesn’t mention the woman. Since it’s a lie anyway, it doesn’t seem necessary to say there’d been two people.
    â€œWhat man?” her mother asks, looking up and down the shore. “Where is he? I don’t see a man with a canoe.”
    â€œHe left,” Frances says. “That way.” She points, and the blanket falls away and her mother sees her wet bathing suit.
    â€œYou went in the water,