Hugo & Rose Read Online Free PDF

lightly touching the wall. Finding her way in the dark.
    Adam was sitting up in the night-light glow of his room. A nightmare.
    â€œHey, little boy. Momma’s here.”
    Rose knelt by his bed. Pushed the fringe of bangs from his face. Wiped the hot tear from his cheek.
    â€œSee? Everything’s okay. Just a bad dream.”
    Adam’s little body shuddered, but he calmed, alert to the safety of his room, the comfort of his mother.
    â€œWater?” he whispered, and Rose handed him the cup from his bedside. She watched his small hands wrap around its plastic sides. Watched him take a sip. Silently he handed it back, wiggling down into the covers.
    Rose gave him a sleepy smile. “Do you want me to give you ideas for some good dreams?”
    â€œYou always tell me the same things: puppies, kitties, ice cream.”
    â€œAnd baseball.” This deeper voice came from the other half of the room. Isaac, in his bed, awake now to his mother and brother. Soon to be eight to Adam’s six.
    Rose sighed. “I need some new material, huh?”
    They nodded. Rose buried her head in Addy’s covers. Tired.
    â€œGive me a break, guys. It’s the middle of the night.”
    Rose made it a habit never to ask the boys about their nightmares. On the rare occasions that Josh would go to them in the night, she would cringe when she heard him ask them what they had been dreaming about. What was the point? Why give the dark dreams any more hold on their consciousness? Instead she would give them new things to dream about. Happy thoughts.
    But at the moment, she was having a tough time thinking of anything other than the rote list she always supplied them with. A minute ago she had been with Hugo … she searched her half-dormant brain for ideas.
    â€œCan you tell us what you were dreaming when you woke up? Was Hugo there?”
    â€œShut up, stupid! Hugo’s always there!”
    True, thought Rose, but still, “Isaac, that’s a bad word. You owe me fifty cents.”
    Adam was excited now, curling his knees under his blankets. “Did you guys get to Castle City?”
    â€œThey can’t get to Castle City, ’cause it’s got an invisible shield around it.”
    â€œHugo can figure out how to get past an invisible shield.”
    â€œNo, he can’t.”
    â€œYes, he can.”
    â€œNo, he can’t.”
    â€œStop.”
    The boys looked at her. Alert as a spring afternoon. Expectant.
    She sighed.
    â€œWe were on the beach.”
    â€œThe pink beach?”
    â€œWere the Spiders there?”
    The boys talked over each other, their questions a tumble of syllables. Rose smiled. “Yes. No.”
    â€œAdam’s afraid of the Spiders.”
    Rose crept a playful hand toward Isaac’s bed. “So am I. They could gobble you up! Yum! Yum!” Isaac giggled as she found his belly, burying tickles in his soft flesh.
    Adam was not going to let her get off topic, though. “But you said—”
    â€œNo Spiders this time.”
    â€œDid the sun come out?”
    Rose nodded. Her mind filled with the memory. “And it lit a path all the way down the beach.
    â€œAnd Hugo was so excited. And he ran.
    â€œAnd I ran after him. And then when he reached where the sun was shining he jumped…”
    For a moment Rose was in two places. The dark close of the boys’ room and the open reaches of the shore. She remembered Hugo’s feet meeting the illuminated sand, then his body rising, back arched, joyous, open to the sky.
    â€œAnd he flew high, high, high into the sky.” Adam knew this dream by heart.
    â€œAnd then so did I.”
    Rose felt her own feet impact the sand. Felt her breath escape her as her body was thrown into the air. Above, Hugo reached his hand back toward her, his face in shadow. She reached up to take it.
    â€œAnd then what?”
    Suddenly, Rose was only on the floor of the boys’ room. The smell of