Read Online The Vanishing Season by Jodi Lynn Anderson - Free Book Online

Pauline shot back, looking at him with a mock frown.
    Liam laughed. “I just want you to have what you want.”
    “Well, you’re not going anywhere,” Pauline said teasingly.
    He sat leaning his back against the couch and expertly searing the edges of his marshmallow, meticulously, perfectly even.
    “ I don’t mind living up here. I like the cold. I like being near my dad. I could live in the north all my life.” He snapped a graham cracker and laid the marshmallow on top. “There’s stuff I’d like to see though.”
    “Like what?” Maggie asked.
    Liam thought. “Well, up in Michigan there’s this spring that’s really deep, but it’s crystal clear, forty feet to the bottom, like glass. It stays the exact same temperature all year, and you can see the springwater bubbling in through the sand on the bottom; the sand . . . rolls . My dad said it looks like the top of a volcano down there. And there are these big, silver trout that have lived in that tiny pond their entire lives. You’re not allowed to go swimming there, but I’d like to.”
    “That’s what you really want to see?” Pauline teased. “In this whole gigantic world? A trout pond a couple of hours away?”
    Liam leaned back against the couch, unfazed. “I never said I was ambitious, Pauline.” He raised his eyebrows at Maggie.
    “What about you?” Pauline said. “Please tell me you have something more interesting planned than a trout stream.”
    Maggie shrugged. “Yeah, I have a lot planned. Northwestern. Then get a job in finance, most likely in downtown Chicago. I get nervous if I don’t map things out ahead of time.”
    “Wow, you’re such an adult,” Pauline said wonderingly, then squinted as she studied Maggie.
    “I get that a lot.” Maggie was always the one her friends back home turned to for practical advice or Band-Aids or a nail file or hand sanitizer. (She kept supplies in her purse and backups in her backpack.) Jacie sometimes called her Grandma Mags.
    “I actually can’t picture that you were ever a kid,” Pauline mused, resting her chin in her hands. Maggie was holding her half-eaten s’more unconsciously in one hand but paused as the comment hit home. It hurt a little. Quick as a fish, Liam darted his face to her hand and stole a bite. Then grinned at her. Maggie felt herself blushing.
    “Let’s go down to the Roadrunner and get pizza,” Pauline said, suddenly standing and stretching, tall and skinny above them. “I’m starving.” Maggie marveled at Pauline’s appetite—she’d already had three double s’mores.
    “Took the words out of my mouth.” Liam stood, pulled his coat on off the couch, then picked up Pauline by her waist and moved her out of the doorway, pretending to need to get to the pizza first. Then he turned back and held the door open for them, suddenly gallant.
    They piled into Pauline’s car.
    “Are you sure we can get through the snow?”
    Pauline pinched Maggie’s cheek and smirked. “City girl.” The car started and stopped. “Sorry,” Pauline said, leaning over the dash. “She’s temperamental. Sometimes she goes. Sometimes she doesn’t. My mom keeps trying to buy me a new car, but this one owns my heart.”
    She put the Subaru key on the dashboard, and Liam leaned forward from the passenger side and loosened the ignition by hitting it with the palm of his hand. He pulled it off, looking like a seasoned mechanic, fiddled a bit, then put the cover back on. This time, when Pauline tried the key, the car came to life.
    “It’s called finesse,” Liam said. He fiddled with the knob, turned the heat on full blast, and kept fiddling with the vent so it would blow on her. Maggie heard something snap.
    “Ugh.” Pauline threw a look at Maggie in the rearview mirror as they backed down the driveway. “He breaks everything.”
    As they ate—standing outside the shop, staring out at the bridge that crossed over the strait into mainland Wisconsin—Maggie thought how much she