Free Always by Delynn Royer

so many other things.
    *
     
    August 1855
    “It’s beautiful, Em. Exactly how I imagined that scene when I wrote it.”
    Emily beamed, pleased at Ross’s compliment.
    He hunkered down next to her on their picnic blanket by the creek, examining her sketch with an appreciative eye. “The bear looks so big next to poor little Matthew. And so ferocious. He doesn’t know if he can really shoot that old grizzly.” Ross looked up with a grin. “It’s perfect.”
    Emily gave him a sly smile. “Flawless.”
    Ross raised an eyebrow, taking up her challenge. “Peerless, in fact.”
    “Impeccable.”
    “Supreme.”
    Emily’s brain reached and stumbled. Best? No, any two-year-old knew that. “Uh, unequaled.”
    Ross’s grin widened. He was sensing victory. “Consummate.”
    Good one , Emily thought grudgingly. “Matchless.”
    “Superlative.”
    Superlative? Jiminy pats. She’d have to look that one up when she got to the print shop. “Um ...”
    “Sublime,” he said when she paused too long.
    Emily wrinkled her nose. Who could beat a word like that? Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson, maybe. She let out a bothered little sigh—her way of conceding defeat—before taking the sketchbook from him. “So, now that I’ve done such sublime work, does that mean you’re finally going to let me read the end of the story? Does Matthew shoot the bear or not?”
    Ross ran a hand through his tawny brown hair, clearing a stray lock from his forehead. It had lightened considerably over the summer. Streaks of gold ran wild all through it. “Next Saturday,” he said, rising to his feet. “I’ll let you read the end next Saturday.”
    Emily tore her gaze from his handsome face to look down at the sketchbook on her lap. Next Saturday. It would be their last Saturday before school started again. The summer was rapidly coming to an end.
    “I don’t know if I can wait that long,” she said. “What if it rains and we can’t meet, and...”
    It wasn’t really the possibility of waiting two weeks to find out the end of the story that bothered her, it was the approaching end of summer. She had never had a summer as wonderful as this one, and that was because she had never had a friend as wonderful as Ross.
    He was two years older, and he was a boy, but somehow that didn’t matter. They thought the same thoughts, they shared the same dreams. Emily had other friends, friends that were girls, friends that she went to school with and played hopscotch with, but none of her other friendships had ever been like this. Secret and exciting.
    She heard a sound— dip-dop-dop-dop !—and looked up to see Ross skipping rocks across the sparkling surface of the summer-shallow creek. He was tall and solid for a boy of thirteen and growing taller with each passing month. The sleeves of his homespun shirt—a shirt that had fit him perfectly in June—now barely reached his wrists. His denims were rolled up to his shins, disguising the fact that he was growing out of them, too.
    As he stood before her, with the late morning sun behind him, Emily evaluated his barefooted, broad-shouldered frame with the keen eye of a budding young artist. Her fingers itched to capture him on paper. Just like he was now. She wanted to trap this moment forever.
    Tired of skipping rocks, Ross returned to her side and dropped to his haunches. “School starts soon,” he said, catching her gaze and holding it. “We’ll be in the same schoolroom this year.”
    Emily didn’t reply. Neither did she look away. What he said was true. Emily was moving to the upper level classroom. Ross was in his last year there before moving on to the boys’ high school. For one year, they would share a teacher and a classroom.
    “Between school and the shop, we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other.” He narrowed his eyes, trying to ascertain if she followed his line of reasoning.
    Emily nodded. “I know what you’re trying to say.”
    “You do?”
    “We can’t let anyone