Love Lift Me Read Online Free PDF Page A

flirted.
    Hale
would have been furious to hear me say that. Hell, he would have been upset
just to see me sitting and conversing with a man like Shane. Nevertheless, even
without Hale there to shoot me an angry expression, the conversation trickled
off until both of us were enjoying the ride in silence. Long trips will do that
to you. Fifteen minutes passed without a word between us until Shane finally
spoke again.
    “Seeing
all these trees makes me think of home,” he said as he watched the landscape
whiz by outside the window. “My old home, anyway.”
    “Where’s
that?”
    “Up
in Michigan. A little rural pocket of a town called Snowberry. You could drive
into town and right back out and not even know you’d been there. I liked it,
though. Quiet. My favorite place to go was the woods right outside my parent’s
house. Right past the backyard. The trees there were so big and tall. I could
take a trail and lose myself in them for hours. It was my place to just think,
you know?”
    “I’ve
got a place like that,” I said, already wishing I was there on a nice, sunlit
day. Maybe even with Shane. He could come, too. “Not as many trees as your
place, mind you, but still just as peaceful.”
    “Does
this place have a name?”
    I
nodded, watching his mysterious amber eyes examine me, and answered, “Stokes
Pond. Real simple, huh?”
    “Simple’s
good.”
    “There’s
an old pier out there my father used to take me fishing on when I was a kid. Most
girls hate fishing. I loved it because I could sit on the end of the pier and
see all the way to the bottom, the water was so clear. Watch the turtles, that
kind of thing. It didn’t matter if a fish got caught or not. Being out there
was like an escape, and it was a place I went to for figuring things out, even
after Poppa stopped taking me.”
    “It
sounds nice,” Shane offered.
    “It
is. Or was. I haven’t been back since forever. The old dock’s probably fallen
apart by now.”
    “Maybe
not. You should check it out when you get home.”
    Maybe
I would.
    Shane’s
phone buzzed in his pocket and he answered, nodding silently and murmuring
quietly to the person on the other end. I watched the landscape through the
foggy window, seeing around his face in profile against the rain. Out in the
downpour, vehicles passed on either side of the bus and the seemingly infinite,
painted yellow lines on the asphalt in one far lane blurred into a single long
streak as we rode along. There were trees and more trees for miles, and besides
the occasional sign to point the way or advertise something no one wanted to
buy, I saw nothing else that stood out from them.
    Hours
passed. We talked about nearly everything, from the odd choice of green
employed by the Median Bus Company to the overpriced, automatic back massager I
found for sale in one of the free magazines. Shane told me about his many trips
around the country, and I told him about life being yelled at by patients in a
hospital. The case he was trying in Wilmington never came up, and thankfully,
neither did Hale. The phone in my purse was all but forgotten.
     
    As
we passed the city line into Greensboro, I reached up tiredly to rub my aching
neck and touched the thin chain that hung there. I’d almost forgotten I was
wearing it because I so rarely took it off. The locket twirled in my fingers
and I watched it spin.
    “ Carol,
I want her to have it. I insist .”
    I
could still hear my grandmother’s lively voice as she argued with my mother on
the day she gave it to me. My sixteenth birthday. She’d called me over to her
favorite chair and draped the lovely necklace around my neck. Hanging heavily
on the bottom was a small locket, almost as thick as my little finger but no
bigger around than a quarter. An intricate, curling, abstract design was
stenciled into the metal on the outside edge. Superimposed over the polished
center were two doves with outstretched wings flying towards each other.
    Grandmother’s
voice