The Secret Sense of Wildflower Read Online Free PDF

hand and I have the secret sense that she knows exactly what I am thinking about. The last time we climbed this hill was nearly a year ago.
    “Are you okay, sweetheart?” Aunt Sadie asks, and I say, yes, though I’m not the least bit okay. Now I have proof that God doesn’t know what he’s doing by taking both Daddy and Ruby before their time.
    Ruby’s box is lowered into the grave with two ropes and Preacher throws a clump of muddy red dirt into the hole. The dirt hits Ruby’s coffin with a dull thud and Mama jerks her head like a gun has gone off, and then she glances off into the distance at Daddy’s grave. As far as I know, she hasn’t visited it once since Daddy died, and I want to take her by the hand and lead her there and show her how beautiful the spot is. But her eyes are as ominous and blue gray as the sky.
    “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” Preacher says and the words sound hollow.
    When someone your same age dies, it’s like it could have been you. I hope I never get as desperate and sad as Ruby. Losing my father taught me how deep sadness can go. The rain grows harder and thunder rumbles in the distance. Another summer storm passes through Katy’s Ridge as we say our goodbyes to Ruby Monroe.
     
     

CHAPTER THREE

    When I tell Daniel and Nathan I heard somebody in the woods three nights before, they come by and search the hill behind our house.
    “We saw deer tracks,” Daniel says, when they return to the back porch. He stomps the mud from his boots on the top step, then uses the side of his boot to sweep the mud away. Daniel looks over at me and shrugs his shoulders in an apology, like he wishes he’d found something.
    “It was just Louisa May’s imagination getting the best of her,” Mama says. “She’s been like that since she was a little girl.”
    Her words make me doubly mad. For one thing she refuses to call me Wildflower, and for another she acts like I don’t know the difference between my imagination and something real in the woods. That was no deer that night, I am certain of it. I’ve been around plenty of deer, and a deer in the woods doesn’t make my skin crawl.
    Meg comes home from work, fixes herself a glass of tea and joins us.
    “What’s going on?” Meg asks.
    “A wild goose chase, that’s what,” Mama says.
    Daniel puts a hand on my shoulder as if to discourage me from wrestling Mama to the ground.
    “You’ve got a nest of baby possums in the base of that old Hickory,” Nathan says, hitching up his pants. He is as lean as the fence rails he put around his field last summer and has to wear both a belt and suspenders. People joke with Amy that she doesn’t feed her husband near enough, but I’ve seen him put away as much food as two regular sized men.
    “Are you sure you heard something?” Daniel asks me. He keeps his arm on my shoulder. I am just the right height for Daniel to use as an armrest.
    “I’m sure,” I say. If anybody else had asked, I’d probably gotten madder still. But Daniel doesn’t ask it like he thinks I am somebody who just makes things up.
    “Sometimes the wind in the trees makes some weird rustling. It even fools me,” he says.
    “I know what I heard, Daniel,” I say. “It was too heavy-footed for a deer or the wind. It was a person, I’m sure of it. Mama says it was just my imagination but she felt creepy about it, too. She locked up the house tighter than a drum.”
    Mama looks at me like I’ve somehow made a liar out of her. I scowl at Meg, leaving space for her to side with me, but she doesn’t say a word.
    “Who’d be traipsing around in these woods?” Nathan asks.
    “I bet I know,” I say, regretting the words the moment I speak them. Mama looks at me all curious. This is not a road I want to take. The less information Mama knows the better.
    “What did you say?” she asks.
    I stick my hands deep into the pockets of my overalls and finger a smooth, round stone I fished out of the streambed the day before. Rocks