Free (2007) Chasing Fireflies - A Novel of Discovery by Charles Martin

on a B-level soap opera. Then this ... opportunity came up. Seemed harmless. I thought it might be a back door into the business ... but it was more like a trapdoor."
    I stoked the fire. "One night about three years ago, I was eating some wings at Pete's down on the water. This guy from high school came in. I knew his face, couldn't place his name. He started laughing with some guys in the next booth, then he pulls this DVD from his briefcase, slips it into his laptop, and angles the screen so his buddies could get a closer look. That angle included me. I saw your name and the title roll across the screen, and then this guy walking down the beach in his birthday suit. I knew what I was about to see, and I didn't want it in my brain. I dropped some money on the table and walked out."

    She kicked off a flip-flop and ran her toes through the sand. "Did Uncle Willee tell you about coming to get me?"
    I shook my head. "Aunt Lorna told me this morning."
    She sat up. "I need to tell you something."
    I didn't want to hear what she was about to say. "I don't have to know everything."
    "I know you better than that."
    "I can lie every now and then."
    "I know you better than that, too." She stood from her bench and came to rest on mine alongside me. She leaned against me, resting her head on my shoulder. "I read a lot of your stories online ... I'm surprised you haven't been picked up by one of the bigger markets."
    "They've called."
    She nodded. "Uncle Willee told me on the plane. Said you had one more story to tell here."
    I nodded, my eyes lost in the flames.
    "Can you let it go?"
    I shook my head.
    She probed. "Can't or won't?"
    "I'm getting closer. I owe him that."
    She rested her head on my shoulder again and closed her eyes. "What if you don't like what you find?"
    "'Least I'll know the truth."
    "Sometimes the truth can kill you."

    Several minutes passed before either of us spoke. "What was it you wanted to tell me?" I asked.
    She closed her eyes. "It can wait." She rested her head in my lap, and I put my arm around her, pulled the rubber band off her ponytail, and ran my fingers through her still-damp hair.
    Have you ever been to the circus and seen those crazy men on motorcycles ride in small loops inside that metal spherical cage? Usually there are about eight of them, and they're always about a millisecond from killing each other.
    That was a good picture of my mind at that moment.
    She sat up. "There's something I need to do." She took my hand and held it in her lap. "I want you to help me."
    "Want ... or need?"
    "Need ... and want." She half-smiled, spread her hand beneath mine, and ran her thumb along the line of my knuckles.
    Her emerald eyes shone green beneath the trees. And below the pain of history, I saw a sparkle. "Is that why you came home?"
    A minute passed before she answered. "Partly."

     

Chapter 6
    eing a farrier was not Uncle Willee's first career choice. When he came home with Lorna, his options were limited. The business community of Brunswick had blackballed him, so he exercised a trade that would take him beyond the borders of Glynn County and allow him to put food on the table.
    Tillman Ellsworth McFarland had always shoed his own horses. Doing so taught him how to read them. Unc says he remembered many a day when his daddy pulled his horse's leg through his and began scraping the V or pulling off a shoe and putting on a new one. Before he put on a new one, he'd hold the old up to the sunshine and read it-how it wore and where it was worn. "Horses are always talking. The shoes coming off their feet are akin to a scream at the top of their lungs."
    Unc took this to heart, and I guess pretty soon he was reading more than just horses.
    Shortly after I realized this, I also got clued in to the contrast between Unc and his older brother, Jack. It was midsummer, hot as Hades in the shade, and a mile above us six or eight buzzards floated in wide circles, riding the heat rising off the earth. Tommye and I