Firefly Island Read Online Free PDF Page A

about getting acquainted in a nonthreatening way that was easy for Nick to adjust to. Less than a half hour together, and I’d blown it already. He hated me. Step away from my daddy, the pressure of that little hand said. Who do you think you are, strange-princess-hair-woman?
    Daniel and I yielded to the push in unison. There was a hand pressing on his leg, too. When we looked down, Nick was poised between us like a tiny Atlas, trying to hold two worlds apart. Daniel cleared his throat, obviously uncomfortable. He gave me a worried look. I was sorry that we hadn’t waited for a less rushed time to begin introductions with Nick—maybe allowed him a few days to reacclimate to DC.
    â€œSorry, buddy,” Daniel said, and Nick just rolled a look at him—the kind of honest scorn that comes from a little psyche not yet attuned to hiding feelings in order to make everyone feel warm and fuzzy.
    We’d really screwed up.
    Daniel extended a hand to take Nick’s. “C’mon, bud. Let’s go see the water.”
    I took a step back. Now would probably be a good time to exit, since this hadn’t gone so well. “I should . . . ummm . . .” I thumbed over my shoulder, wincing apologetically. “Go back to . . .”
    I never finished the sentence. The most amazing thing happened, and in that moment, I felt certain that angels must have been swirling overhead. They smiled down on us as Nick turned to me, his face rising into the light, his blue eyes framed with his father’s thick lashes. He reached upward, fingers extended, all ten of them, as far as they would go, and in the space of a heartbeat, I understood that he wanted me to pick him up.
    Daniel and I glanced at each other, and he just shrugged. “Well, I can see I’m second-rate.”
    I picked Nick up, swinging him onto my hip somewhat awkwardly, but he didn’t seem to notice. Instead, he flashed an over-the-shoulder smirk at his dad, a pleased look with perhaps a hint of gloat in it. Daniel grinned wider and shook his head, a dark curl toying near his eyebrow. “I think someone’s after my best g-i-r-l.” He spelled the last word, and Nick squinted at him, trying to discern the meaning.
    I felt like a queen, like a rock star, like a supermodel with adoring fans crowding in at the edges of the catwalk, fighting over me. Nick wasn’t pushing me away from his dad. He was pushing his dad away from me.
    Nick wrapped his little arms around my shoulders, and from that moment on, we were friends. He quickly discovered that although I didn’t know how to properly cut up a hot dog into toddler bites and I could not even begin to name the characters on Thomas the Tank Engine , I could keep a balloon in the air for a long time without reusing any part of my body, I was pretty good with a soccer ball, and I had a poor short-term memory that made me easy to beat at the memory match card game. Time after time, it was a mystery to me which card had the purple dinosaur under it and which had the rubber ducky, and so on. Nick loved that about me. He also knew more farm animal sounds than I did, and he loved that, too. I had no idea what a goat might say, and I didn’t know whether a bull would moo like a cow or snort like a fire-breathing dragon. Nick knew because his grandparents lived in a rural neighborhood with farms just down the road. I didn’t mind losing parlor games to a kid who had yet to graduate from day care to official preschool. I was just happy that the three of us were bonding so well.
    We made dinners together. We played games. We did thingson the weekends. We watched the last of the spring blossoms fall and new leaves come in. The Gymies, fearing that I’d been kidnapped by some underground government agency, began reconnoitering, sniffing out the situation, asking concerned questions.
    â€œDon’t you think things are moving a little . . .