Read Online Return to Tomorrow by Marisa Carroll - Free Book Online

foil-wrapped chocolates in animal shapes.
    â€œPerhaps.” What if she took Ahnle back to the Stateswith her? She had promised Father Dolph eighteen months of her life. But after that…
    She didn’t like to think too far into the future. For so many years she’d had to survive day by day, sometimes hour by hour. She couldn’t look that far ahead without being afraid of what might come. She liked Ahnle. They worked well together. They were growing closer each day, despite the difference in their ages. She was old enough to be the girl’s mother, it was true. In Ahnle’s world she was old enough to be her grandmother. But here, in the hand-to-mouth existence of a camp almost within shelling distance of a hostile border, none of those distinctions mattered. They were two women bound together by the loss of a child. It was a bond they would always share.
    â€œIt is time for Mass,” Ahnle said, hearing the recording of a church bell playing from the loudspeaker above the chapel. “Will you go? I will take the baskets.”
    â€œYes, I’ll go.” Rachel picked up two of the small baskets. “This one is for Father Dolph. This one for Brother Gabriel—” the Belgian monk who was Father Dolph’s assistant “—and this one for Dr. Reynard.”
    â€œThat is three,” Ahnle said counting. “Who belongs to the four?”
    â€œYou do,” Rachel said, ignoring the fractured grammar in the last sentence. “Happy Easter, Ahnle.”
    â€œThank you, Rachel.” Ahnle smiled and bowed ceremoniously, then reached out and touched Rachel’s hand, lightly, fleetingly. Among Ahnle’s people touching was reserved for family members only. “Happy Eea-star.”
    â€œI’d better hurry or I’ll be late for mass.” Rachelturned away to hide the rush of feeling that surged into her heart.
    â€œI will walk with you.” Ahnle picked up the basket destined for Dr. Reynard. “I will give this to the doctor so you will not anger Father Dolph’s God by being late.”
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    A N HOUR LATER , R ACHEL walked along the dusty main street of the camp, her heart and soul comforted by the timeless peace of the Mass. The heat of the day was beginning to fade. Storm clouds massed on the horizon, reminding her that the rainy season was almost on them. She shuddered to think of what the unpaved streets and pathways of the camp would be like after three or four months of steady, heavy rain.
    Ahead of her, near the main gates, a UN Border Relief Organization truck was off-loading sacks of rice to be distributed among the camp residents the next day. They also supplied sugar and salt, canned meat and fish. The food was nourishing but dull. Drinking water, too, had to be trucked in. Water for washing and laundry was supplied from cisterns located in various places around the camp, or from the stream running along the north border of the compound.
    Everything the camp used, everything they needed to exist here, had to be trucked in. It was an ongoing process that never stopped, regardless of the weather or occasional random shelling from Vietnamese-backed Laotian insurgents who occasionally infiltrated the next valley. If she walked this way again tomorrow, the trucks would still be there, or others just like them. Perhaps tomorrow the medical supply truck with the antibioticsand surgical supplies that Dr. Reynard had ordered two weeks earlier would arrive.
    As she watched, another vehicle drove through the camp gates. It was a jeep, a U.S. army jeep, old, battered and disturbingly familiar. Rachel stopped in her tracks, watched as it drew to a halt before the camp guards’ security hut. Two men got out, both tall and lean, hard-muscled, one black, one white.
    â€œRachel.” Ahnle’s touch on her sleeve was feather light, her voice soft, but Rachel jumped as if she’d been poked with a stick.
    â€œAhnle! You scared me