Free The Clay Lion by Amalie Jahn Page B

heart.  I pulled my arms
through the sleeves and buttoned each of the buttons carefully.  I
admitted silently to myself that I was on a slippery slope, back to the days
when I refused to leave the house and left the world behind, but I did not
care.  I knew I had failed.  I knew the attic insulation was coming
down and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
    I padded down the stairs in my bare feet. 
My mother and father were seated at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and
watching the local news.  They both acknowledged my arrival with smiles
and good mornings.  My mother offered to fix my breakfast, which
surprisingly, I accepted.  Despite my depression, I was famished.  I
took it as a good sign.  I polished off three eggs, sunny side up, two
pieces of cinnamon toast, and a large glass of orange juice.  My father
responded with a comment about my having a hollow leg, a comment typically
reserved for Branson’s large appetite.
    I had envisioned a day spent idly wallowing in my
own despair, but after breakfast, as I was making my way back upstairs to my
room, I was struck by a wonderful thought.  The attic of the hardware
store was being torn apart for one reason and one reason alone – a child kicked
a ball on the roof.  That was it.  That seemingly inconsequential
detail set off an entire chain of events in everyone’s lives involved at the
store.  It suddenly occurred to me that I did not have to keep Branson
from helping to fix the attic.  I had to keep the roof damage from being
discovered.  And although it was too late to change the outcome during
that trip, should the need arise, it could be changed
on another trip by someone else.  If the cream did not cause the disease,
and it was caused instead by the store attic, all was not lost!  If the
ball never landed on the roof, the damage would never be discovered.  And
I already knew the exact time to make sure the change could take place. 
New hope melted away the impending depression and I ran the rest of the way up
the stairs, stripping off my robe so that I could get dressed and take on the
day.
     
     
     
     
    C HAPTER T WELVE
     
     
     
     
    Each moment subsequent to my revelation, I set about
enjoying the gift of togetherness that my trip afforded me.  Armed with
the knowledge that there was nothing more that I could do during that
particular trip to save him, I spent as much time as I could enjoying Branson’s
company.  We spent Christmas vacation holed up in the family room in front
of the fireplace eating Mom’s snickerdoodles and
playing Rummy and Crazy Eights.  We worked together on his science fair
project that was due after the first of the year.  He chose to experiment
on bean plants and sound waves, just as he had the first time.  We went
ice skating in the park with Chad, Sarah, and Branson’s friends from
work.  We finished reading three of our favorite Charles Dicken’s books aloud together, again.  In the middle
of Great Expectations , Branson suddenly stopped and looked at me.
    “What?” I asked.
    “I’m glad you didn’t go all the way off the deep
end,” he commented without an ounce of playfulness in his voice.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Before, when you were driving me crazy with all
that ‘work at the mall’ business and you were crying all the time and freaking
out.”
    “Oh, yeah.   That,” I replied.
    “I’m just glad you are back to your old self,
Sis.”
    “Me too,” I agreed
    Life continued on much the same as it had the
first time for the next several weeks.  The greatest difference for me was
the amount of time I spent daydreaming about Charlie, which of course did not
occur originally as I had been blissfully unaware of his existence.  I
made sure to look for him everywhere I went - at the grocery store, out to
dinner, at the mall with Sarah, but I never saw him.  He was like a ghost
and I was beginning to think I had imagined him.
    I had been back for just over four months when