The Third Hill North of Town Read Online Free PDF Page A

to herself when she saw him close his eyes. She was glad he had accepted a ride; the poor boy was obviously exhausted. He didn’t get enough to eat, she knew, and it was a wonder he could even stay on his feet.
    She pulled up to the stop sign at a T intersection about a mile and a half out of town. To the right and not far away—though she had no idea of this—was Elijah’s farm; to the left was the open highway, leading eventually to the New Hampshire border, and from there to the rest of the country.
    She looked both ways, as if confused. She wasn’t, though; she was just waiting for guidance. Ever since she had begun her journey that morning, she had needed no map. Something had been advising her, telling her which way to go, and she implicitly trusted whatever this something might be. She knew all she had to do was wait a moment, and it would speak to her again.
    And it did, of course.
    Home is this way, she thought, turning left.

Chapter 2
    A lmost six thousand, Elijah concluded . That’s how many people die in the world every single hour. Holy SHIT.
    His fixation on the global mortality rate had sidetracked his plan to acquire Julianna’s newspaper. More importantly, it had also kept him from paying attention to his surroundings. With this latest equation solved, however, he opened his eyes at last and straightened up, gazing around. The intersection where Julianna had made her choice was now almost a mile behind them.
    Dammit, he thought. If she tells Mom I let her go the wrong way, I’ll catch hell.
    His parents didn’t allow him to curse aloud, but in his own head he followed a different set of rules.
    “Uh, ma’am?” He leaned forward, embarrassed. His shirt was sticking to his back. “We need to turn around.”
    Julianna found his eyes in the rearview mirror and giggled. “Since when do you call me ‘ma’am,’ silly?”
    Elijah didn’t know how to respond to this, so decided an apology was in order. “Sorry.” He cleared his throat. “My house is back that way.”
    Julianna shook her head and giggled again. “Honestly, Ben, you act as if I were born yesterday.”
    Elijah blinked. The gravel road they were on would soon merge with a blacktop highway. The woman was driving fast, stirring up a lot of dust, and she showed no signs of slowing.
    He raised his voice a little to make sure she could hear him above the noise of the wind and the crunch of the tires on the gravel.
    “My name is Elijah.” The dust from the road made him cough. “And our farm really is the other direction.”
    “Elijah?” Julianna guffawed. “Where on earth did you come up with a ridiculous name like that, Ben Taylor?”
    Her laugh was throaty and full, and under other circumstances Elijah would have enjoyed hearing it. There wasn’t much laughter in his home; Samuel and Mary Hunter were a bit stern and rarely laughed aloud. But given that this woman apparently thought he was someone else, her mirth set him on edge.
    “My name isn’t Ben,” he insisted. “It’s Elijah. Elijah Hunter.” He grabbed the front seat for balance as the car slid onto the shoulder for a moment.
    Julianna made a dismissive sound with her lips that sounded like “pfff.” About a half mile in front of them was where the gravel road became blacktop. She could see the coming change in the road surface and she smiled, relieved.
    She called over her shoulder. “I can’t wait to be off this gravel! It’s so loud, isn’t it?”
    Elijah didn’t answer. He had finally noticed the hospital wristband on her left forearm, and was staring at it with queasy fascination. He was beginning to suspect that he might not actually be in the company of a Methodist Bingo Lady from Prescott, Maine, after all.
     
    Ninety-seven miles away from Elijah and Julianna, on a rural highway in the middle of New Hampshire, it was raining heavily, and Jon Tate stood on the side of the road with his thumb out, praying for a ride from the only car he’d seen for the