Spark: A Sky Chasers Novel by Amy Kathleen Ryan Read Free Book Online Page A

Regina Marshall had always been a warm, accepting person, and she’d never approved of Waverly’s skeptical nature. She would likely say that Seth was just an angry boy who lost his mother and had to live with Mason Ardvale, which would be enough to spoil anyone’s mood. Seth had learned his lesson, and his being out of the brig wasn’t going to put anyone in danger, not even Kieran.
    “He’s a good soul,” Regina had once said about Seth. “He’s just misunderstood.”
    “That’s what I think, too,” Waverly said into the empty apartment.
    The closet door stood open, and Waverly passed a hand through her mother’s clothes, stirring up her sandalwood scent. Regina’s black sweater hung askew on a hanger, and Waverly put it on, rubbed the cashmere against her arms.
    On the top shelf of the closet was the box of family photos that Regina had squirreled away, always intending to make an album but never getting around to it. “I could do that,” Waverly mumbled. “I could make the album and surprise Mom when she comes home.”
    She’d have to sort through all their family photos, put them in order, pore over the memories. She wouldn’t have room in her mind to think about Kieran or Seth or any of the terrible things she’d done. Nothing had ever sounded so comforting.
    Waverly got the stepladder from the kitchen, pulled the box down, and marched into the living room to sit on the sofa.
    There were dozens of photos, ranging over Regina’s infancy and childhood, through her teenage years, and then on to the time she dated and married Waverly’s father, a handsome man with a wide smile and deep-set brown eyes. Waverly’s baby pictures showed a happy little girl with rosy cheeks. Waverly especially loved an image of her parents holding her as a wild-haired toddler. She set it aside; she’d make a frame for it and put it on her bedroom wall.
    One picture at the bottom of the box caught Waverly’s attention, and she pulled it out. It showed her father as a young man, the gray just beginning at his temples, standing with Captain Jones. The two men looked as though they’d just shared a private joke; the Captain had one beefy hand on Galen Marshall’s shoulder, fingers flexed as though he meant to steer him somewhere. Galen was laughing, his chin tucked into his chest, teeth glistening. They stood in a large white room that looked familiar to Waverly, and she realized that it was one of the labs, probably the botany lab where her father had worked. Waverly turned the photo over.
    Galen and Eddie, discovery of phyto-lutein, was scrawled on the back of the photo, again in Regina’s hand. Waverly had seen this photo before, of course, but she’d never lingered over it, never wondered why it appeared to have been crumpled and flattened out again, why the edges of it were frayed, showing the white paper underneath the glossy image. And she’d never turned it over to read the caption, or if she had, she hadn’t really noticed it. Waverly set this photo aside, too, and went back to sorting through the others, arranging them in chronological order.
    As she worked, though, her eyes kept trailing back to the image of her father with Captain Jones. Something about it nagged at her. A part of her didn’t want to think about it. She wanted to fix up this album, lose herself in a project, feel better. But Waverly had never had much success at switching off her mind, and the wheels turned until she identified what bothered her about it.
    Never once had her mother referred to the Captain as Eddie. He’d always been the Captain, or Captain Jones, and the name had always been spoken with a cool reserve. But on the back of the photo Waverly’s mother had identified the Captain as Eddie, as though he were a good friend. Even more odd, Regina had always said that she and her husband had been far from the Captain’s inner circle, outsiders who were happy to be kept out of decision making. But the photograph had captured a