Free Promise Bound by Anne Greenwood Brown

shoulder, she circled, skimming them across my back, then over my left shoulder, until she was facing me again. I caught a flashof smile. Her behavior reminded me of Pavati’s, and I was both tempted to lunge at her and to hold her at bay for my own protection. But when she darted away from me—so fast I had to trail her thoughts to follow—I opted for the former. A second later, I lost the connection.
    “Where are you?”
I called out to a silent lake.
    “Right here.”
She grabbed my ribs from behind.
    “Man, you are getting seriously good at quieting your thoughts,”
I thought, half impressed, half offended.
“I can barely hear you at all.”
    “Can you hear me now?”
    “Loud and clear.”
I pulled her into my arms and we spiraled together into deeper water. I felt the pulse of her belly against mine, basked in the images that flickered through her mind. Her thoughts were fleeting, like a slide show running too quickly. Some of them were so beautiful I tried to cling to them, to reinforce them with my own: the two of us together. Forever.
    But one of those slides worried me more than Maris ever could. Lily hoped I wouldn’t notice it, but she wasn’t quick enough to shield me from an image of myself in a car, leaving Bayfield, without her in the passenger seat.
    “Lily, there’s something I want to ask you.”
    “Later,”
she said.
“You and I need to talk about a certain dagger, and how it ended up in Gabby Pettit’s purse.”
    If she meant to distract me, it worked. I could feel the blood draining from my face.
“What?”
    Lily raised her eyebrows, then darted toward shore.
    As was our habit, I left the water first. My clothes werewhere I’d shed them—but now neatly folded—on the dock. Lily’s were wind-tangled in the willow branches.
    “Do you want me to wait with you?” I asked, but she shook her head. Despite my persistent requests to hold her hand through her painful transformation, she always made me leave her behind, to suffer alone. It was the worst part of my week.
    Reluctantly, I entered the sleeping house. Mrs. H had left us dinner, wrapped in foil, but I didn’t touch it. Instead, I climbed the stairs to Lily’s bedroom.
    I flipped on the lamp in the hopes of finding a sweatshirt easily. She was going to need it when she came in. The room was in its usual state of disaster, so I didn’t find what I’d come for. Instead, I found Lily’s journal,
MY SCRIBBLINGS (Vol. 3)
, half tucked under her bed.
    I hesitated. A muffled scream and crackling
pop
came from the beach. I took a flinching step toward the book, then stopped. She’d kill me if I read it. I couldn’t invade her privacy like this. But still … Maybe she’d written something about Pavati. Maybe she had started to write a response to Pavati’s letter. No. What was I thinking? It was wrong. But maybe if I picked the journal up, something would fall out. Accidentally.
    I crossed the room and picked the journal up, holding it in both hands. What secrets did Lily keep inside? What new poems had she written? I held the spiral binding and shook the notebook three times. A black-and-white magazine clipping of a woman in a formal gown slipped from the pages and fluttered to the floor. But nothing else. I won’t deny I was disappointed.
    I sat down on the bed. After a few seconds, I turned back the corner of the cover and peeked inside. It was a whole page covered in
Lily Hancock-White, Lily White, Mrs. Calder White
. Over and over again in curling, flower-laden cursive writing. It made me laugh out loud. At least I wasn’t the only one dreaming about our future.

10
LILY
    I watched with envy as Calder pulled himself into the shallows, curled into a fetal position, then extended with a giant popping sound. The pain I knew too well was evident on his face; he grit his teeth, and the veins in his neck strained under his smooth skin, but he was so well practiced that no sound escaped his lips. In less than a minute he was