Everlasting by Elizabeth Chandler Read Free Book Online Page A

around a corner. A second car went by, slowing like the first. There was no time for her to duck out of sight. No big deal , Ivy told herself; she would do the same thing if she came upon a girl walking alone in the middle of the night. Still, she was relieved when she reached the wooded footpath.
    Fifty feet down the path, despite the fact that her eyes were well adjusted to the darkness, Ivy couldn’t see where she was going. The nearest campsite was a little over a quarter mile away. She reluctantly turned on her flashlight, hoping the woods were dense enough to prevent someone from seeing the moving beam. She focused it on the ground, just in front of her feet, wrapping her fingers around its head, trying to filter and soften the light.
    Behind her a branch cracked. Ivy flicked off her light, turned, and looked toward the clearing where the trail crossed the paved road. The darkness enveloping her was lighter toward the clearing, like black velvet brushed thewrong way, but she could see nothing distinctly. Chiding herself for being skittish, she continued on.
    She had planned to count her steps as a way of keeping track of how far she’d gone, but they were stumbling strides at odd lengths, so there was no point. She knew there was a place where the trail divided into three paths. The two paths to the right traveled close to the pond’s edge. The one to the left eventually looped around the pond but veered away from its shore. If Tristan had sent the message via Lacey, wouldn’t he stay close to the pond? Even so, he’d be hidden, Ivy reasoned, so she would have to be seen—she would have to make herself obvious, if they were to connect.
    A crisp splintering of wood followed by a trampling of brush made her whirl around. She raised the flashlight’s beam to a point fifty feet behind her, striping the trees, making a kind of optical illusion in which it was hard to distinguish solid tree trunk from space between. She lowered the beam a notch, which succeeded only in tangling the light in fallen branches and brush.
    Ivy reminded herself that animals made noise—they weren’t all as stealthy as cats. She continued on. The walk to the fork seemed endless, and she wondered if she had missed it. She went twenty feet farther, then raised her flashlight. There it was: the trail marker! Breathing a sigh of relief, she chose the middle route, which tracked closest to the water.
    Under the crescent moon, the pond lay perfectly still, a surface of polished ebony. If Tristan were here, how could she get his attention? Hiding and calling to him would be safer for her, but silently letting herself be seen would be safer for him. Ivy ducked under branches, walked through waist-high reeds, and waded into the pond.
    AFTER LACEY LEFT, TRISTAN HADN’T BEEN ABLE TO keep his eyes open. The route between the hospital and Nickerson was about twenty miles each way, a long hike to make in one day. With the park’s campsites clustered around three ponds, Cliff, Little Cliff, and Flax, he had settled at Ruth’s Pond several days ago. The woods here were his refuge, wrapping him in gentle night. He fell asleep and dreamed.
    In his dream he was lying on the porch of an old house, watching Ivy wade into a pond. She swam for a long time, unaware of him, sending ripples of gold over the sapphire surface. He watched her with wonder, the way she had come to love the water. After a while she turned on her back and floated.
    He longed to go to her, gaze down at her face, and touch the tips of her floating hair. He knew how it would look, spreading out from her face like rays of the sun.
    Then he heard her speak, her voice so close to him that he heard it inside him: It’s such a great feeling, floating ona pond, a circle of trees around you, the sun sparkling at the tips of your fingers and toes. Her words had once been his, when he’d taught her to swim.
    He yearned to hold her. All he wanted was to kiss her one more time. He waded in. He