If You Find Me by Emily Murdoch Read Free Book Online Page B

front windshield, taking it all in. New is amazing to her. She can’t fathom it being anything else. But I can. Although it’s good she’s seeing it as exciting, because it could’ve been the opposite, after all those years tucked away in our Hundred Acre Wood. She could’ve stayed like she was yesterday. She really scared me yesterday.
And I’m still worried. I can’t help it. Silent and sweet may not be the best combination amongst town folk. Out in civilization. Out in the real world.
The truck is silent except for the whistle of air through my father’s cracked window.
I tug at one of Nessa’s curls, and she flicks me off like a fly. I’m not the main attraction anymore.
Feeling wicked, I do it again.
    I know about cameras. Our mother had one, an old Brownie, but we never had any film to put in it. Ness kept bugs in it, like a cage. Fat beetles and even a butterfly once, always set free after five or ten minutes. I’m wishing I had that camera now as I giggle at the sight of Nessa grappling with the handburger near as big as her head, ketchup like Mama’s lipstick smeared around her mouth.
    Civilization is almost worth it for the food alone, I reckon. The fries are right good with lots of salt, and the burger runs with “medium-rare juices” down our collective chins.
    “Slow down, Ness. Chew your food,” I tell her, my eyes scanning the walls for the bathroom entrance, just in case our little wolf regurgitates.
    I’m momentarily distracted by a chubby toddler in a high chair, clacking a spoon against the table and smacking his lips. I remember Ness at that age, easily. Mama propped her up on a stack of yellowing newspapers, a rope around her waist tying her to the back of a chair.
    I take the handburger from Ness’s hand, cut it in half, and place the smaller half on her plate. She flaps her hands in protest, then immediately goes back to eating.
“Mrs. Haskell said we need to be careful, sir. Ness needs to be built up slowly.”
    My father regards me silently, and for a second, as fast as the flash of a camera bulb, I see pride. Pride in me. Something unfolds in my chest: a winged, fluttering warmth. It’s almost too much to bear.
    I turn back to my sister. She’s eating with her eyes closed, chewing slowly. I take a few bites of my own burger, dunk a few more fries in ketchup. I’m already full up.
    “You need to build yourself back up too, Carey,” he says with a softness that only makes it worse. The warmth flutters behind my eyes. No. I blink it back.
    “Yes, sir.”
I take another bite of my handburger, then another. “It’s only forty minutes or so to the house from here. Everything’s already set up for you two. I’m sure what ever comes up, we’ll work it out,” he tells me.
    I glance at him and hold it this time, both of us measuring, wondering, worrying about this new life.
“Those are some gorgeous girls you have there,” the woman with the toddler calls out to my father, smiling at Nessa and me.
“Thank you. How old is your boy?”
“Fourteen months. Already he’s eating us out of house and home.”
Their words float back and forth over our heads as I watch Jenessa eat her last fry and slurp her milk shake clean.
As for me, I’ve eaten almost half my burger. A pink-cheeked girl whisks off the remains (my father calls her a “waitress”) along with most of my fries, returning minutes later and handing me a spongy white box I reckon is made from the same material as my father’s and Mrs. Haskell’s steaming cups of (what I now know to be) coffee. She winks.
“There you go. If you don’t want it, I’m sure your dog will love it.”
I slurp the dregs of my milk shake, and she shakes her head uh uh. I stop, my ears burning. Don’t act backwoods. I want to ask the man, my father, for another glass, but the thought of asking, of the connection it implies, is so uncomfortable, I don’t.
The waitress hands my dad a slip of paper on a little black tray, and a pen.
“I’ll