Wish You Well Read Online Free PDF

wave to him, Oz. He’s up there.”
    “Cross your heart, stick a needle in your eye?”
    “All of that. Go ahead and wave.”
    Oz did and then smiled a precious one.
    “What?” his sister asked.
    “I don’t know, it just felt good. Think he waved back?”
    “Of course. God too. You know how Dad is, telling stories and all. They’re probably good friends by now.” Lou waved too, and as her fingers drifted against the cool glass, she pretended for a moment that she was certain of all that she had just said. And it did feel good.
    Since their father’s death, winter had almost given over to spring. She missed him more each day, the vast emptiness inside her swelling with every breath Lou took. She wanted her dad to be fine and healthy. And with them. But it would never be. Her father really was gone. It was an impossibly agonizing feeling. She looked to the sky.
    Hello, Dad. Please never forget me, for I won’t ever forget you
. She mouthed these words so Oz couldn’t hear. When she finished, Lou thought she might start bawling herself, but she couldn’t, not in front of Oz. If she cried, there was a strong possibility that her brother might also cry, and keep right on going for the rest of his life.
    “What’s it like to be dead, Lou?” Oz stared out into the night as he asked this.
    After a few moments she said, “Well, I guess part of being dead is not feeling anything. But in another way you feel everything. All good. If you’ve led a decent life. If not, well, you know.”
    “The Devil?” Oz asked, the fear visible in his features even as he said the terrible word.
    “You don’t have to worry about that. Or Dad either.”
    Oz’s gaze made its way, by steady measures, to Amanda. “Is Mom going to die?”
    “We’re all going to die one day.” Lou would not sugarcoat that one, not even for Oz, but she did squeeze him tightly. “Let’s just take it one step at a time. We’ve got a lot going on.”
    Lou stared out the window as she held tightly to her brother. Nothing was forever, and didn’t she know that.

 
     
    CHAPTER FIVE
    It was very early morning, when the birds had barely awoken and thumped their wings to life, and cold mists were rising from the warm ground, and the sun was only a seam of fire in the eastern sky. They had made one stop in Richmond, where the locomotive had been changed, then the train had cleared the Shenandoah Valley, the most splendidly fertile soil and temperate climate for growing virtually anything. Now the angle of land was far steeper.
    Lou had slept little because she had shared the top bunk with Oz, who was restless at night under the best circumstances. On a swaying train heading to a new, terrifying world, her little brother had been a wildcat in his sleep. Her limbs had been bruised from his unconscious flailing, despite her holding him tight; her ears were hurting from his tragic screams, in spite of her whispered words of comfort. Lou had finally climbed down, touched the cold floor with bare feet, stumbled to the window in the darkness, pulled back the curtains, and been rewarded by seeing her first Virginia mountain face-to-face.
    Jack Cardinal had once told his daughter that it was believed that there were actually two sets of Appalachian mountains. The first had been formed by receding seas and the shrinkage of the earth millions of years before, and had risen to a great height that rivaled the present Rockies. Later these ridges had been eroded away to peneplain by the pounding of unsettled water. Then the world had shaken itself again, Lou’s father had explained to her, and the rock had risen high once more, though not nearly so high as before, and formed the current Appalachians, which stood like menacing hands between parts of Virginia and West Virginia, and extended from Canada all the way down to Alabama.
    The Appalachians had prevented early expansion westward, Jack had taught his ever-curious Lou, and kept the American colonies unified long