Wish You Well Read Online Free PDF Page A

her so very tightly already.
    Although most of the passengers were unaware, the train gradually banked left as the line curved away from the city on its way south. As it did so, Amanda’s arm slid off her stomach and dangled over the side of the bed.
    Oz stood there stunned for a moment. One could sense that the boy believed he had just witnessed a miracle of biblical dimension, like a flung stone felling a giant. He screamed out, “Mom! Mom!” and almost dragged Lou to the floor in his excitement. “Lou, did you see that?”
    But Lou could not speak. She had presumed their mother incapable of such activity ever again. Lou had started to utter the word “Mom” when the door to the compartment slid open, and the nurse filled the space like an avalanche of white rock, her face a craggy pile of displeasure. Wisps of cigarette smoke hovered above her head, as though she were about to spontaneously combust. If Oz had not been so fixated on his mother, he might have jumped for the window at the sight of the woman.
    “What’s going on here?” She staggered forward as the train rocked some more, before settling into its arrow path through New Jersey.
    Oz dropped the necklace and pointed at his mother, as if he were a bird dog in search of praise. “She moved. Mom moved her arm. We both saw it, didn’t we, Lou?”
    Lou, however, could only stare from her mother to Oz and back again. It was as though someone had driven a pole down her throat; she could form no words.
    The nurse examined Amanda and came away even more sour-faced, apparently finding the interruption of her cigarette break unforgivable. She put Amanda’s arm back across her stomach and covered her with the sheet.
    “The train went around a curve. That’s all.” As she bent low to tuck in the bedcovers, she saw the necklace on the floor, incriminating evidence of Oz’s plot to hasten his mother’s recovery.
    “What’s this?” she demanded, reaching down and picking up Exhibit One in her case against the little boy.
    “I was just using it to help Mom. It’s sort of ”—Oz glanced nervously at his sister—“it’s sort of magic.”
    “That is nonsense.”
    “I’d like it back, please.”
    “Your mother is in a catatonic state,” the woman said in a cold, pedantic tone designed to strike absolute terror in all who were insecure and vulnerable, and she had an easy target in Oz. “There is little hope of her regaining consciousness. And it certainly won’t happen because of a necklace, young man.”
    “Please give it back,” Oz said, his hands clenched together, as though in prayer.
    “I have already told you—” She was cut off by the tap on her shoulder. When she turned, Lou stood directly in front of her. The girl seemed to have grown many inches in the last several seconds. At least the thrust of her head, neck, and shoulders seemed emboldened. “Give it back to him!”
    The nurse’s face reddened at this abuse. “I do not take orders from a child.”
    Quick as a whip Lou grabbed the necklace, but the nurse was surprisingly strong and managed to pocket it, though Lou struggled hard.
    “This is not helping your mother,” the nurse snapped, puffing out the odor of Lucky Strikes with each breath. “Now, please sit down and keep quiet!”
    Oz looked at his mother, the agony clear on his face at having lost his precious necklace over a curve in the track.
    Lou and Oz settled next to the window and spent the next several rolling miles quietly watching the death of the sun. When Oz started to fidget, Lou asked him what was the matter.
    “I don’t feel good about leaving Dad by himself back there.”
    “Oz, he’s not alone.”
    “But he
was
in that box all by himself. And it’s getting dark now. He might be scared. It’s not right, Lou.”
    “He’s not in that box, he’s with God. They’re up there talking right now, looking down on us.”
    Oz looked up at the sky. His hand lifted to wave, but then he looked unsure.
    “You can