Fly Away by Kristin Hannah Read Free Book Online Page B

When Kate was mentioned, Marah invariably
     said something like, She’s gone, and walked away. She was always walking away. She didn’t want to be on this vacation
     and she wanted to reiterate that point on a daily basis. Not once had she put so much
     as a toe in the water.
    Like now. Johnny was standing waist-deep in the warm blue water, helping the boys
     catch waves on their Styrofoam boogie boards, while Marah sat in a bright pink beach
     chair on the sand, staring to her left.
    As he watched her, a group of young men approached her.
    “Keep walking, guys,” he muttered.
    “What, Dad?” Wills yelled. “Push me!”
    Johnny gave Wills a push into the gathering wave and said, “Kick,” but he wasn’t watching
     his son.
    On shore, the young men gathered around his daughter like bees to a blossom.
    The boys were older, probably college-age. He was just about to get out of the water,
     march across the hot sand, and grab one of the kids by his surfer-dude hair when they
     walked away.
    “Be right back, boys,” he said, walking through the two-foot surf to the beach. He
     sat down next to his daughter. “So what did the Backstreet Boys want?” He tried to
     sound casual.
    She didn’t answer.
    “They’re too old for you, Marah.”
    She looked at him finally. Dark sunglasses shielded the expression in her eyes. “I
     was not having sex with them, Dad. We were just talking.”
    “About what?”
    “Nothing.” On that enlightening answer, she got up and walked back toward the house.
     The sliding door cracked shut behind her. They hadn’t had a conversation that lasted
     longer than three sentences all week. Her anger was a Teflon shield. He could occasionally
     see glimpses of her pain and confusion and grief, but those seconds didn’t last. She
     was hidden inside all that anger, a little girl crouched inside a teen with the perfect
     defense, and he didn’t know how to break through the façade. That had always been
     Kate’s job.
    *   *   *
    That night, Johnny lay in bed, arms wishboned behind his head, staring at nothing.
     A ceiling fan whirred lazily overhead; the mechanism caught once each revolution,
     made a clicking sound between the thwop-thwop-thwop of the turning blades. The louvered shutters on his door clattered quietly, buffeted
     by the breeze.
    It didn’t surprise him that he was still awake on this last night of their vacation—if
     that was what a trip like this could reasonably be called—and he was pretty sure he
     wouldn’t be able to go to sleep. He glanced at the digital clock: 2:15.
    He threw back the sheets and got out of bed. He opened the louvered door and stepped
     out onto the lanai. A full moon hung in the night sky, impossibly bright. Black palm
     trees swayed in the plumeria-scented air. The beach looked like a curl of tarnished
     silver.
    He stood there a long time, breathing in the sweet air, listening to the sound of
     the waves. It calmed him so much he thought maybe he could sleep.
    He made a pass through the darkened house. It had become his habit in the past week
     to check on his kids during the night. He carefully opened the boys’ bedroom door.
     They slept in twin beds, side by side. Lucas clutched his favorite toy—a stuffed orca
     whale. His brother had no time for such little-boy’s toys.
    He closed the door slowly and went down to Marah’s room, opening the door quietly.
    What he saw inside her room was so unexpected, it took him a second to comprehend.
    Her bed was empty.
    “What the hell…?”
    He turned on the light and looked more closely.
    She was gone. So were her gold flip-flops. And her purse. Those were the only things
     he knew for sure, but it was enough to tell him that she hadn’t been abducted. Well,
     that and the open window—which had been locked when she went to bed and could only
     be opened from the inside.
    She had sneaked out.
    “Son of a bitch.” He went back to the kitchen and rummaged through the cupboards until