One Came Home by Amy Timberlake Read Free Book Online Page B

as we could remember of “My Darling Clementine” and made up several more. We discussed how much ginger was required to make a good ginger beer and argued about whether a diamond-shaped kite or a box kite was better for flying in the fierce wind at Mount Zion Cemetery. We made plans to start a moth collection, find a bear’s den (I promised not to shoot), track down some honeycomb, and climb up to Flat Rock, where we’d spend the night watching for comets.
    Then Agatha turned at a split-rail fence, and I realized shewas heading toward the McCabes’. Or, to be more accurate, toward Billy McCabe.
    Had she wanted to see Billy this entire time? I’d wanted to be with
her
, and here she was thinking about Billy?
    Billy McCabe had corrupted my sister’s character. It began the moment he and Agatha became best friends at that town picnic on the bluff. Billy was fifteen, Agatha was fourteen, and I was nine. The two of them went off to explore a cavern with “an echo like a cathedral.” (Some words a person remembers with exactitude.) I followed, keeping up until Billy ruffled my hair with his pawlike hand. “Why don’t you play with Ebenezer? He’s your
age
,” he said.
    I rolled my eyes at Agatha, sure she’d agree that Billy McCabe’s pea-brained presence was no longer required. We, the sisters, would go off on our own. We’d leave the dimwit behind.
    Instead, Agatha shrugged. “You don’t like caves, Georgie. Stay here. You’ll have more fun.”
    Oh yes, that stung!
    Agatha and Billy had been friends ever since. From then on, everybody in Placid assumed that Billy and Agatha would tie the knot.
    This blue-sky February day was only two months after the New Year’s ball. Ever since that ball, the situation had felt tentative. I’d been watching Agatha closely, sure all it took for disaster to strike was Agatha showing weakness where Billy was concerned.
    If spending your blue-sky day on someone wasn’t aconsent, then I didn’t know what it was. Meet Mrs. Billy McCabe! Billy would take Agatha off to some barely settled, territory-like place in Minnesota and I’d never see her again. Apparently, this was all fine by Agatha.
    I stopped right there. “I’m not going that way,” I said.
    “What?” said Agatha.
    “You’re asking me to spend time with babies so you can be with Billy.”
    “Georgie, you
like
those boys fine.”
    “The McCabe boys think the most ignorant things are funny. All they’ll want to do is shoot this rifle.”
    “That’s what you want to do.”
    “Not like that, I don’t.” I kept walking down the road.
    Agatha stood at the turnoff watching me. “Where are you going?”
    I turned around to face her and said loudly: “To be by myself. I don’t
fancy
the McCabes like you do: Billy, Billy, Billy.”
    Her face screwed tight when I sang out his name like that. “Suit yourself. Be back here in an hour,” she said.
    I walked on without saying anything. Our first free day, all that bright blue sky and melting snow, and Agatha wasted it. She’d do worse too: she’d ruin everything. She’d leave our family. She’d leave
me
. In an hour I expected to see Agatha and Billy perched on the McCabe fence, holding hands, ready to share their “announcement.”
    Let her. I do not need her
, I thought.
    *  *  *
    I more or less clomped down the road, losing all sense of blue sky. When I reached a field, I turned into it and headed toward the woods on the other side.
    I was three-quarters across when I saw something rooting around on a patch of snowless ground underneath some black oaks. It stopped me short. I looked twice to be sure. But that rosy chest was unmistakable, and those birds are not exactly small—wild pigeons.
    February 28 was mighty early. People talked about pigeons sending scouts, but I’d never believed them. Scouting suggested intelligence, which everybody knew pigeons lacked. But there they were: about twenty-five of them feeding on acorns at the field’s edge.