Until We Reach Home by Lynn Austin Read Free Book Online Page A

go home?” Of course the answer was no, but Elin stopped saying it.
    “You won’t want to go back home once you see America,” Kirsten told her. She was sorry that she had frightened Sofia by mentioning the water nacks and wanted to make amends. “It will be so wonderful there that we’ll wish we had moved there sooner. Just look at all of these other travelers. I’m sure many of them will be continuing on to America, as we are. Do you think they would be going all the way to America if it wasn’t a paradise?”
    Sofia swiped at her tears. “What will it be like there?” she asked.
    Kirsten didn’t know how to describe a place she’d never seen, but the least she could do was make up tales to soothe her sister. “We’ll all marry rich husbands and sit in the warm sunshine all day and eat strawberries and cream.”
    “Don’t even talk about food!” Sofia begged. She hung her head over the bucket again.
    Kirsten felt queasy at the mention of food, too. And she’d had an unexpected stab of pain the moment she’d mentioned husbands. She silently vowed never to give her heart away again after the way Tor had tossed it aside. Besides, Kirsten didn’t think she could ever love anyone as much as she’d loved him.
    “Take deep breaths,” Elin told Sofia as she went through the dry heaves. Elin reminded Kirsten of their mother. Mama always used to tell them to take deep breaths whenever one of them felt sick. Kirsten missed her mother. She missed Papa and Nils, too, even though they both had abandoned them. Mama had had no choice whether she lived or died, but Papa and Nils had deliberately chosen to leave. They had rejected her as heartlessly as Tor had.
    “Think of all the money we’ll save on food if we’re too sick to eat,” Elin said. “Our bread and cheese will last much longer this way.”
    Sofia gripped the bucket like a life preserver and moaned. “I’m going to die. If the boat to America bounces and rolls like this, I will surely die of seasickness—unless we drown first.”
    Elin rubbed Sofia’s back and smoothed her hair off her forehead. “Don’t worry,” she told her. “The ocean will be much calmer than the North Sea. Besides, we’ll be sailing on a huge steamship, not a skimpy little boat like this one. The ocean liner will ride the waves much better. You’ll see.”
    Kirsten caught Elin’s eye above Sofia’s bent head and mouthed the question, “Is that true? ” Elin gave a helpless shrug.
    A few hours after they set sail, Kirsten was as sick as Sofia, vomiting her breakfast into a bucket. When the bout ended, she lay down across the row of scarred wooden seats like Sofia was doing. Kirsten hadn’t slept very well last night. Or the night before, for that matter.
    Most of the other passengers became sick, too, as the ferry rolled and swayed, tossed like a toy on the towering waves. Kirsten watched one of the sailors cleaning the deck with a mop and thought of Tor, sweeping the sidewalk in front of his father’s store. He had stopped sweeping as if surprised to see her, but after she’d said good-bye and had turned to walk away, she’d heard the shushing sound of his broom behind her as he’d resumed his work. She drew her knees up to her chest to ease the ache inside.
    She and Tor and Nils had been friends for as long as Kirsten could remember. Then Nils had run away to Stockholm, leaving her and Tor behind. She had missed her brother every bit as much as she’d missed her mother and father—and that’s how she’d found herself wrapped in Tor’s arms one afternoon, weeping for everyone she had lost. He had comforted her, murmuring softly in her ear. “I miss him, too, Kirsten.”
    The next thing she knew, Tor’s lips had found hers and they were kissing. A host of powerful sensations had surged through Kirsten as if she’d walked through a forbidden door and discovered a new land. She hadn’t wanted Tor to stop kissing her. Even now the memory made her feel warm