Coming Home (Norris Lake Series) by Amy Koresdoski Read Free Book Online

turned from inside the squad car and led him out into the yard.  Her parents backed away from the car for a moment, surprised at their daughter’s ability to soothe the frightened child. 
    "Is he going to stay here with us?" Beth asked, as if she already knew the answer and looking for affirmation from her parents.  The two adults looked at each other for a moment. 
    Marie spoke, "We adopted him.  He will be living with us from now on." 
    "What’s his name?" Beth asked.  The sheriff looked at his wife in panic, searching for an answer. A moment passed. 
    "I think his name should be Stephen,”  Beth said.  "He looks like a Stephen." 
    "You know, baby.  That just happens to be his name," the sheriff answered.  "His name is Stephen." 
    "How did his eyes get to be like that, Daddy?" Beth asked still holding tightly to her new brother’s hand.  "He looks like my bunny, Harvey." 
    "I don’t know, baby.  He’s just different.  It isn’t bad.  It’s just different, the same way that you have black hair and your mommy, me, and your brother have brown hair. Not bad. Just different," the sheriff answered, a sigh of relief echoing through his entire body. 
    "I love him Daddy, just like I do Harvey.  I don’t think he’s different like you say.  I think he is special."  Beth pulled Stephen’s hand.  "Come on Stephen. Let’s go see the new puppy." 
    Stephen, enraptured by the girl, allowed himself to be pulled along behind her.  As they rounded the corner of the house, the boy looked back at the sheriff and Beth.  Stephen smiled, his white teeth fading into the background of his shocking white hair and pale skin. 
    Marie reached over to grasp her husband’s hand and looked at the boy.  With a smile she waved with the other hand.  With a stifled gasp, she squeezed her husband’s hand, her grip growing stronger as her dark brown eyes locked with the boy’s.  With a small gasp, she held her breath, unwilling to be startled by the bright pink of the boy’s albino eyes.  Her husband squeezed her hand in return. 
    "You’ll get used to it Marie,” he whispered.  “He’s still just a boy, and he’ll need all the love we can give him.”  Marie said a short prayer under her breath, nodded her head and turned to walk with her husband towards the front door.  They spoke in hushed voices as the sheriff explained how he had decided to return to the old woman’s house and search for the boy.  She winced when she heard him talk about the fire and pursed her lips angrily listening to the part about Tarlington.  She reached one hand up to touch the new growth of whiskers and his tired, yet hopeful eyes. 
    "It was the right thing to do, wasn’t it?" he asked. 
    "Yes John, it was."  She pulled him close and let herself be engulfed in his arms. In the back yard they could hear their two children laughing and George’s deep baritone voice.  Not surprisingly, they heard nothing from their new ward. 
    "Does he talk?” Marie asked. 
    "In time,” the sheriff, said “Give him time. We’ll never know what he’s capable of unless we give him time."
    The boy, Stephen, held tightly to Beth’s hand staring at her in both terror and wonder.  Stephen had never seen another child, only the woman that had been his mother.  There had been old black and white pictures he had found once while he was digging through a worn black trunk.  The pictures were stuck together in little stacks.  When he’d tried to peel them apart some of them had disintegrated into thin paper strips.  Still he’d found a few that weren’t ruined by the moist basement room, but when he had tried to look at them in the barely discernible light, he couldn’t make out much but small pale white faces staring back at him with large blank eyes.
    "Let’s go swing, Beth,” Jeremy said. 
    "You want to go swing?" Beth asked Stephen.  He looked at her blankly. 
    "He doesn’t speak and I am not sure he can hear you.  I don’t