Free Something Of A Kind by Miranda Wheeler Page B

over each r while her n’s slides together with prolonged
syllables.
Is she seriously falling asleep?
    “I can power wash the foundations.” Noah murmured, planning
to forget. He knew she wouldn't remember the request in the
morning, anyway. If she repeated it in sobriety, he'd dig in the shed
for a hose.
He waited for a response that didn’t come. As he dropped a foot
on the first stair, she muttered quietly, “You’re a good boy, No-no.”
     
“Thanks Mom,” he whispered, disappearing as soundlessly as
possible.
     
He wasn’t so sure.
     
CHAPTER 7 | ALYSON
    When her father picked her up, the only thing he had to offer Aly
was a lecture on how her unpreparedness proved inconvenient. After
spending several minutes shaming, complaining, and making it clear
that he refused to recognize his own part in locking her out, he
dropped his keys on the coffee table. Claiming he would be out of
town, whereabouts need-to-know, Greg explained his organization
utilized carpools and commuter lots. The SUV was at her disposal
under the condition of responsible behavior. They parted ways in the
stairwell.
If he's just going to barricade himself in the basement, I'm
staying upstairs.
    With Noah racing through her thoughts, it wasn’t long before she
swore to distract herself. Overthinking was leading to over-analysis,
enabling invasive doubts.
What is he thinking, feeling? What will we be? And what was
Greg’s fit all about?
    Her father averted the subject of Noah, but his resulting glare
left her uninterested in hearing his opinion. She didn’t want to
discuss anything with him.
My life here deserves to be separate.
    If
Greg
thought Noah would be
off-limits
because Lee
Lockwood was ‘business with an elder,’ the man would be
disappointed. Rude looks were one thing, but intervention was a line
she hoped he wouldn’t cross.
If he’s unobtrusive, I’ll stay out of this insane Ashland
‘researcher’ controversy.
     
Without words, her father was under her skin.
    Normal girls would ache beneath a smile, drag a dozen outfits
from their closets, gush to their friends and mother. Aly liked him,
but was it like that? Did Noah think so? How would her mother feel
about it?
She’d think I was trying to forget her, to escape in him. Oh
God… am I?
    Alerted by the strain in her back and the hair nervously twisted
around her fingers, Aly forced herself out of bed. Her exhaustion
was useless against a mind that wouldn’t shut off. Still dressed in the
day’s clothes and sick with unease, she wasn’t prepared to sleep.
    Aly needed to get her mind off things before it exploded. Her
first instinct was to blast music and draw, but her materials were
buried and Greg was probably sleeping, even if he was in the depths
of the basement.
I need to do something. Assigning a task shouldn’t be this
difficult.
    If her window wasn’t fixed, she would’ve crawled onto the
overhang above the back porch. Aunt Lauren's creaky Victorian had
a set of twin balconies, one overlooking the lake, another exposed to
the street. Between closing her eyes to a steady breeze and watching
boats that left foam paths in their wake, she found peace there. There
was an unaffected calm in the midst of the gnawing grief. Serenity
offered a life after her mother. It promised a ceasefire.
    Lakes were intimate, spared from the travel of whispers in the
currents. They trusted the sky, not the jigsaw of bodies. They were
whole in themselves, not intended to a direct part of something
bigger.
    After spending time in Ashland, it was impossible not to notice
the ocean constantly in her peripheral. It was a muscle she could
only turn her back to while it flexed in supremacy.
    She forgot about it only when surrounded by trees, cloaked by
the forest. The roar of the tide was raw. Aly left it in the distance.
She hadn’t ventured onto the sands. She saw ash everywhere, glass
and slivers beneath the paper dust. Normalcy had already been
swept out to