And Then I Found You Read Online Free PDF Page A

all her mom’s tones the way a pianist knew
     all the keys.
    “I’ll want it forever,” Katie said.
    Her mom’s ice cream cone melted down her forearm unnoticed or touched. “I hope you
     do. I hope that whatever it is you want that you don’t give it up just because someone
     else asks you to do so. Anything you want, Katie, anything, don’t let someone else
     talk you out of it.”
    “I want another shark tooth necklace,” Katie said, grinning.
    Her Mom had smiled, but with only the bottom part of her face. “Nice try.” She put
     her hand on Katie’s leg. “You think you love that boy, don’t you?”
    “He’s not a boy. He’s Jack. And I don’t think I do, I know I do.”
    “You’re fourteen.”
    “You didn’t love anyone when you were fourteen?” Katie licked the edge of the cone,
     scooping the last of the ice cream into her mouth..
    “No, I loved my Raggedy Ann doll. That’s about it at fourteen.” She handed the remainder
     of her cone to Katie.
    “Really?”
    “Really.”
    “Well, Jack is the most amazing boy in the world.”
    “You’ll let him talk you out of your dreams. That’s what love does sometimes—talks
     you out of your dreams.”
    “Not me,” Katie said. “Jack would talk me into my dreams.”
    *   *   *
    It should have been simple. Katie wanted to take the Winsome Wilderness job to make
     a difference in the world, to help those who were helpless, to reach out to a child
     who didn’t have what she’d been given. But somehow it turned complicated, like a mathematical
     equation Katie could never solve.
    Jack begged her not to go, saying “Why do you want to be so far away from me? There
     are social work jobs all over Birmingham; you don’t have to be across the country
     to help kids.” Her dad told her she was crazy, saying “You’re too far away. The money
     isn’t even good.” And then there was the panicked plea from her mom, “If anything
     happened to you, I’d never know and you’d be stuck in the middle of nowhere.” Katie
     did her best to soothe their worries and promised to be home soon.
    The job entailed camping out with thirteen- and fourteen-year-old girls, helping them
     learn the ways of the wilderness while keeping them in line until their therapists
     showed up to counsel them two days a week. Katie and the other guides were to impart
     stories and lessons to the girls, but the main goal was to allow nature to do the
     work.
    On the nights she wasn’t camping, Katie shared a two-bedroom apartment in Timber,
     Arizona, with five other girls and a mass of bunk beds, knowing that rarely would
     any of them be there at the same time. It was the perfect way to have a home base
     and also save money. Perfect, that is, except for the rare times when all of them
     had off the same week. Field guides, they were called. After one week of intense training
     and an assurance of her love for nature’s unreliable behavior, Katie went off into
     the wilderness. No cell phones. No TV. No cars. No cable. Only nature. And Katie fell
     in love—with the wilderness, with the girls, with the work.
    The pain humans inflicted one on another, even in love, had done damage to these girls
     in ways Katie had never known. She watched as they arrived angry and hurt, slowly
     opening to nature’s erratic and tender wildness. They learned self-reliance by crafting
     necessary items. They took what they’d been given in the wilderness and created something
     out of it: a spoon, an arrow, a pouch of leather, and, most importantly, a fire. Then
     they took what they’d been given inside—all the wonderfulness inside—and created a
     new life. The creative spirit reigned in the wilderness, and each girl who graduated
     took a piece of Katie’s heart with her.
    After three months of summer work, Katie decided to stay on with her job. She’d always
     thought of work as something to fill time and make money, a nuisance that preoccupied
     her from greater