Joëlle Anthony - Restoring Harmony

Restoring Harmony — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Restoring Harmony" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

1234567...50

Table of Contents

This book is dedicated to my two favorite storytellers,
whose books have enriched my life and
the lives of countless others.

Nevil Shute
1899-1960
and
John Rowe Townsend
1922-

July 10th-Oaks fall, but bending reeds brave the storm.

-English proverb

WHEN THE PLANES ENGINE TOOK ON A WHINING roar, my grip tightened on my fiddle case. We lifted and skimmed across the waves. All I could see through the window was a fine spray shooting out beside us. In one swift motion, the old floatplane was airborne. I squeezed my eyes shut.

If all the big governments hadnt seized the last of the oil ten years ago, I couldve simply gotten into a car and driven from British Columbia to Oregon in twelve hours, like my parents used to do in the good old days, before the Collapse.

Eight weeks ago, wed received a letter from my grandpa that hed written almost a month before saying Grandma had suffered a stroke. After the letter came, Mom had tried to reach him on CyberSpeak, but kept getting a message saying his account had been closed. Her letters to my grandparents had also gone unanswered.

The hospital where my grandfather had worked for over thirty years was close to their house and so Mom was sure my grandmother had gone there. It had taken her three weeks of trying during the one hour a day they accepted CyberSpeak inquiries before she finally got a connection.

Im sorry, the nurse had said. We dont have a Katharine Buckley.

Did she go home? Mom asked.

The family had all gathered around the computer together, watching the nurse on her video cam. The woman looked up at us, her heavy-framed glasses reflecting the bright hospital lights.

You are all her immediate family, arent you? I cant give this info out to anyone but the immediate family.

In spite of the seriousness of the situation, all of us except Mom cracked up laughing. My parents looked so much alike, with crazy, curly dark hair, big brown eyes, and the same wiry build that strangers had mistaken them for brother and sister a million times. And all four of us kids looked like carbon copies of them, just in different sizes.

Yes, yes... Im her daughter, Mom had said impatiently. Brianna Buckley.

Hang on, the nurse said.

The tapping of her fingers on the keyboard came across loud and clear at first, but then everything changed. The sound began to distort, and the nurses face turned fuzzy.

Im sorry, she said. Mrs. Buckley is d-

And then wed lost the connection and we couldnt get it back.

Did she say deceased? Mom yelled.

I think she was saying discharged, Dad said.

Mom burst into tears. No... she said is. You say is deceased or was discharged.

Brianna, Dad said, putting his hands on her shoulders and trying to sound firm, calm down. Think about the baby.

I cant worry about the baby right now, she sobbed.

Mom was forty-two, and my six-year-old brother Jackie was supposed to be the last kid in the family, so even though my parents didnt admit it, it was pretty obvious that this baby had been a surprise. After the initial shock, we were all excited.

The problem was that Moms blood pressure was sky-high and Dr. Robinson had told her to take it slow, but to her, slow meant making four batches of jam instead of six. Before the call to the hospital about her mother, she wouldnt even consider his advice. Shed ignored our pleas and kept doing all her regular chores. On one hand, we were sad about Grandma too, and hated to see Mom depressed, but it was also sort of a relief that she was finally spending time in bed, even if she was crying a lot. The whole family took turns trying to cheer her up, but she refused to be consoled.

We never made up properly, Molly, Mom had cried into the fresh spinach soup I made for her. My mother will never know that I was sorry!

What do you mean? Id asked, confused. Youve talked to Grandma on CyberSpeak every week for years.

But not about anything important, she wailed. We havent seen each other since 2028! Or maybe even 2027... I cant remember, its been so long.

My sister, Katie, brought Mom strawberry shortcake, but she pushed it away untouched. James, my older brother, who claimed he was her favorite (although none of the rest of us believed it), tried cheering her up in the evenings on CyberSpeak. He was working in the Okanagan Valley on the mainland for the summer, and he told her silly stories about his days in the vineyards, but she didnt even crack a smile. Little Jackie even brought in a kitten from the barn to perch on her pregnant belly, but nothing helped.

Eventually Dad sent me on my bike for Dr. Robinson, but he couldnt give her a sedative because this was a risky pregnancy.

Dad, Katie, and I held a family conference in the barn and secretly agreed Mom was probably right and that Grandma had died. And if Grandma was gone, then Grandpa was all on his own. According to my mom, Grandpa had never washed a shirt or cooked a meal. She was sure that if she didnt go down and rescue him, hed die of starvation. If it hadnt happened already.

Before the Collapse, Grandpa couldve driven his car to restaurants and hired someone to do his laundry, but now with so many businesses closed, and everyone too careful with their money to employ a housekeeper, hed probably have to fend for himself. Mom had convinced herself he was living in squalor without anything to eat.

To keep Mom from doing something crazy like going to Oregon herself, I had been elected to make the trip instead. Katie flatly refused to go because she was planning the wedding of the century, but even if shed wanted to, I doubt my dad wouldve trusted her. Shed either get distracted by the stores along the way and spend all her money on clothes, or shed come running home at the first sign of hardship.

It had taken my dad a while to get the money together. The people on our tiny island barter for almost everything, and Dad had to export most of our early lettuce, leeks, and spinach to Vancouver Island to raise the cash. Hed gotten as much as he could, and I think that some of our friends had chipped in to help too, but I was still going to have to be very careful with my money.

The wind tossed the little plane from side to side, and I grabbed at the seat in front of me. The other nine passengers held on too, their hands tightly gripping the cracked leather seats, nervous laughter filling the cabin.

Just a little turbulence, the pilot called from the cockpit. Nothing to worry about!

Easy for him to say. I had all kinds of things to worry about. Like would my aunt Poppys American boyfriend be there to meet me when the plane landed? And if he wasnt, how much trouble would I be in?

Aunt Poppy had broken all kinds of laws sneaking me aboard this government flight from Victoria to Seattle, risking God knows what? Maybe even prison. I wasnt sure what they did to teenagers who broke international law, but I didnt want to find out.

Poppy worked for the Canadian government, and she flew to Seattle regularly for meetings with the Department of Agriculture. She hadnt been available to travel with me because of work, and you have to be eighteen to cross the border alone so shed bribed a pilot she knew to ignore that my passport clearly showed I was only sixteen.

Next page

1234567...50

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Restoring Harmony»

Look at similar books to Restoring Harmony. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.

Hugh Howey

Molly Fyde and the Land of Light

Georgia Byng

Molly Moon & the Morphing Mystery

Marion Lennox

A Millionaire For Molly

Betty Hechtman

A Stitch In Crime

Pam Kaster

Molly the Pony: My Readers Level 3

Robert Grey Reynolds

Molly Pitcher

Molly-Mae Hague

Becoming Molly-Mae

Disney Books

The Ghost and Molly McGee: First Day Frights

Maid Molly

Molly Maid Cleaning Handbook: The Complete Guide to a Clean House

Erik Jon Slangerup

Molly and the Machine

Bloom

Mollys game: high stakes, Hollywoods elite, hotshot bankers, my life in the world of underground poker

Molly Bloom

Molly’s Game: From Hollywood’s Elite to Wall Street’s Billionaire Boys Club, My High-Stakes Adventure in the World of Underground Poker

Discussion, reviews of the book Restoring Harmony and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.