Read Online Red Lightning by Laura Pritchett - Free Book Online Page B

too.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Tess knows this feeling.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  It’s when the universe is trying to tell her something,
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  and she needs to hold still and listen.
    â€œOh, wow,” I say, my brain making vague connections. “I heard on the radio earlier in the day, when I was making that cake, there’s a wildfire in the mountains. That’s what we smell. That’s why it’s so hazy.”
    â€œWe can smell a wildfire in the mountains from here?”
    â€œYes. I think that’s it.”
    â€œBut it’s so far away.”
    â€œWell, it’s a pretty big fire. That’s where I used to live. Those mountains. The haze is going to make the sunset so pretty, so red. All the particles in the air. What a mess. Colorado, I mean. Every year now, it burns.”
    She turns to face the blue outline of mountains. “But it won’t get to us.”
    I look at her, touch her shoulder. “Oh, no, that’s impossible. It’s very far away. But the smoke travels on windy days. See how the wind is coming straight from the west?”
    â€œI want to do my chores.” She walks across the driveway to a cement water tank, turns it on, bends over to watch the water burble through the hose and into the cement rectangle. That reminds me of Ed’s fruit trees, and I turn to see him moving the water on them again and then turning to watch the mountains himself.
    Once the water is going, Amber turns around and stares at me, as if I’m supposed to walk over there too. So I do. When I come up from behind her, she points to the cows that are wandering slowly toward us.Their knees look like huge knots in a tree. “This is Franny and Zooey,” she says, nodding to the cows. “These cows both had calves this spring. But it’s fall now, and we need to wean and sell them. The other ones we’re keeping, though. For milk.”
    I stare at the cow that comes forward to get a scratch from Amber. The other cow dips her nose into the tank, raises it, nuzzles the first with a nose still trickling water, and then head-butts the first cow out of the way for her own scratch. As I watch Amber laugh and lean forward so that she can reach the other, I start humming.
    Humming because I am now out of words, of strength, worn down from meeting my daughter, and I’m just now seeing that perhaps I shouldn’t have come at all—it’s too hard once a heart has been met by another. I also wonder at Amber’s willingness to speak to me at all, wonder if it comes from shock—it’s too hard to be gruff and angry when you’re not prepared. I stop humming, clear my throat. Still, I must try. I hug my arms to my chest. “Was that hard, in earlier years? Selling the calves?”
    She eyes the mountains. “Wow, look at the sky. It’s turning red. That’s gonna be the prettiest sunset ever.” She looks at me, surprised, as if I’m the one responsible for it, and then adds, “Well, weaning calves, it’s part of life.”
    â€œTrue enough. Every living thing in this world gets weaned eventually. Right?”
    She considers that. “Maybe not humans.”
    â€œYou don’t think so?”
    â€œNaw. Even my mom needs to know her mom is okay.” She turns to consider me and then looks back at the setting sun, a bright red globe hanging over the mountains and sending sprawling oranges and reds spiking in all directions and lighting up the few clouds that are above us in a deeporange glow. “Maybe some humans don’t need their mamas. But most do.”

Chapter Six
    People regularly ask forgiveness for the sins they commit, but they often don’t ask forgiveness for the things they neglected to do. But those are