Forever & Always: The Ever Trilogy (Book 1) by Jasinda Wilder Read Free Book Online Page A

whiny that sounds.  
    Please send me one of your pictures.  

    Your always friend,
    Caden

    P.S. I tried something besides “sincerely” because that sounds stupid, too. But I’m not sure if what I put is more stupid.
    P.P.S. Is there a difference between saying “photo” and “picture”?  

    I thought about signing it again, but didn’t. Before I could chicken out, I folded the letter carefully and put it in an envelope, stuck a stamp to it, and put it in the mailbox. I was home, and Dad was at the hospital. He always made me come home and do my homework before coming to the hospital. Something about “normalcy.”  
    Like any such thing existed anymore.
    Sometimes I would just sit at my desk with a pen and paper, like I was going to write a letter to Ever, but I didn’t write it and I wouldn’t, I knew I wouldn’t, because I was delaying. Not going to the hospital. That’s what I was doing. I was avoiding going, pretending like I was going to write a letter, when all I was doing was making an excuse not to have to see Mom dying. I knew I should see her, because she’d be gone soon and I wouldn’t have a mother anymore, but I just…I didn’t want to see her. I wanted for her either to be suddenly miraculously fine, or just…to die. To not suffer anymore. I didn’t want her to die. Of course not. But that’s what it felt like, deep inside me. I never said so, not to anyone, not even to Ever, but it was there inside me, and it was horrible.  
    So I sat, and tried to just not feel anything. I wasn’t even drawing anymore. What was the point?
    After putting the envelope in the mailbox, I sat on the front porch and delayed the walk to the bus stop a mile from our house, where the bus would pick me up and take me to the hospital where Mom was a skeleton in a bed, her insides being eaten by some invisible little creature bent on stealing my parents from me.  
    The distant mumble of the mailman’s strange mailman car/van/truck thing echoed off the overhanging oak branches and 1950s brick house walls. Rumble…stop…rumble…stop, closer and closer. I knew he had a letter for me from Ever. I could feel it. I’d started to get a strange buzz in my stomach when the mailman had a letter for me from Ever. It wasn’t anything magical or weird. I just…knew.  
    Finally the mail truck stopped in front of my house, and Jim the mailman poked his salt-and-pepper head out of the open doorway and reached into the mailbox and took my letter, rifled through a stack on his lap and stuffed bills and junk mail and circular ads into the mailbox, and then he held a white envelope in his gnarled fingers and pointed it at me, brown eyes twinkling, winking. I hopped down the three steps from porch to sidewalk and jogged over and took the envelope from him.
    “Every week, Caden. You and this girl, one letter every week.” His voice cracked a lot, deep as an abandoned mineshaft, broken by decades of cigarette smoke and gruff from yelling in Vietnam, I think. He was missing two fingers on his left hand, and if he wore a short-sleeved uniform shirt in the summer, you could see the shiny twisted skin where he’d been injured somehow. He limped when he had to set a box on the porch.  
    I nodded. “Yes, sir. One letter a week.”
    “You sweet on the girl?”
    I shrugged. “We’re pen pals. Friends.”
    Jim grinned with one side of his mouth. “Ah. You are. She’s pretty, ain’t she? Got long legs and soft hands, don’t she?”
    I hated these conversations adults always wanted to have with me whenever Ever came up. I shrugged and backed away from him. “I guess. She is pretty, yeah. Listen, though, I gotta—”
    “Letters ain’t no substitute for the real thing.”
    “We’re just pen pals.”
    He nodded, gnawing thoughtfully on the inside of his mouth. “Gotcha.” He waved. “See ya ’round, Cade.”
    “See ya, Jim.” I held the letter balanced on my palm for a moment, watching Jim rumble away, then carried