The Summer of No Regrets by Katherine Grace Bond Read Free Book Online

truck.
    “Let me know if you have any more problems,” he said to Dad before he drove away.
    Dad gave a brief nod and headed into the woods.

chapter
seven
    I had some woods of my own once, but I lost them. The trees were different from our Kwahnesum evergreens. Instead they were oaks and dogwoods and sycamores. I had a house, but I lost that, too.
    Nonni had named their place in Westfield, Indiana, Cherrywood—a gingerbread kind of house with a big kitchen and screened-in porch. In the back, the lawn roled down to Nonni’s garden, a rail fence, woods, and a meadow where Opa rode his riding mower round and round every evening. Opa was a builder and Cherrywood was his creation. Nonni was its queen
    —a librarian in a floppy hat.
    Every summer since I was nine, I’d been alowed to fly out to Cherrywood by myself to visit Nonni and Opa. Malory wanted to stay in Kwahnesum most of her summers. But Cherrywood seemed more like home to me than our cramped single-wide, even though it was probably an eco-monstrosity.
    And since I’ve been gone from it, I’ve felt lost.

    •••
The evening sun was hitting the bedroom windows. I cranked the skylight open and sat at my computer. The Shivat Eiden group skylight open and sat at my computer. The Shivat Eiden group was moving around in the downstairs kitchen. Downstairs is where retreats happen. (Our apartment is upstairs and takes up as little room in The Center as possible.)
    The Malory Invasion was well underway. My Hindu statues were gone from the bookshelf, replaced by a copy of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders .
    Clothes covered the second bed. Malory had disappeared shortly after the cougar party ended with its guest of honor’s execution.
    I couldn’t blog about the cougar; the thought of her was jagged and cold in my gut.
    Absently, I typed NationalEnquirer.com into my browser.
    “Whitley’s Prayer with Dying Child” was the top article and, I had to admit, it was for this I’d disgraced myself in the Burger Arcade. Whitley and his prayer beads were at the bedside of a cancer-stricken nine-year-old from Fresno. I considered blogging about it but couldn’t admit to my source material.
    I scroled down the page and noticed another headline:
    “Trent’s Mom Hurls Chair at Daytime Emmys.” (Had the Emmys been injured?) Trent grinned cockily at the camera, apparently unconcerned about his chair-wielding mother. Did he look like Luke? Not exactly. Did I expect him to?
    Malory chose this moment to barge into “our” room. I switched to Word fast and grabbed yesterday’s poetry book purchase.
    “It’s freezing.” She cranked the skylight closed. “You know, Mom could use some help downstairs.” As if Mallory had been helping run The Center all year. Evidently I’d made a full recovery from this morning’s near-death experience.
    “Where’s Dad?”
    Malory gazed at the ceiling. “He’s still in the woods banging on his drum. Clearly in ful-blown midlife crisis.” Three quarters of psych and Malory’s diagnostic skils were at the level of fine of psych and Malory’s diagnostic skils were at the level of fine art. “Whatever happened to him walking around the woods with his flute?”
    I sidestepped the question. When I’d asked Dad about replacing his lost flute, he’d said it would be a waste of money because he was no longer interested in playing “Eurocentric music.” “Dad’s been drumming for years,” I reminded her.
    Malory knew this. Dad’s master’s thesis was on northwest native drum art.
    “Not so he can talk to spirit guides.” Malory stashed her suitcase, knocking a chunk of adobe off a corner of the closet.
    Dad had never completed the finish work on the upstairs, and you could still see the even rows of tires that made up the wals.
    Mom said they looked like modern art. But realy they looked like tires. And the adobe, made from straw, clay, and dirt we’d mixed in our driveway, had a habit of faling off if