Crooked Hills Read Free

stores and restaurants up the road,” Mom said, sensing my confusion. “We’ll go into town in a couple of days, after we get settled in a bit.”
    She hit the brakes, slowed down, and veered onto a dirt path through the forest. The car jostled and bumped, and pebbles clicked and clattered beneath us. The path curled deep into the woods, but we passed a few cabins, houses, and secluded pastures along the way. Low-hanging branches tapped and scraped across the roof of the car like boney fingers.
    The forest opened up like a yawning mouth, and we crossed a concrete bridge. I craned my neck to get a good look at the creek below. The shore was covered in a flat bed of round, white stones, and tangles of branches bunched up around the base of the bridge. The water was so clear I could see the rocky creek bottom in most places, but a couple of spots looked dark and deep. A little ways downstream, the flow picked up speed and rushed over some large rocks and around the bend. It wasn’t like whitewater rapids, but it was close.
    On the other side of the creek, the trees once again grew thick, pressing in on both sides, their shadows washing over the rocky stretch of road.
    We rounded the bend and followed the path parallel to the twisting band of water. A heavy copse of trees separated us from the creek, but occasionally I caught a glimpse of water glistening from behind the veil of thick, leafy trees.
    “Look up there.” Mom pointed toward the hill.
    Alex pressed his hands and face up against the window in the back seat. I looked, too, and saw four deer wandering through the trees. One sported huge antlers. The deer watched as we slowly rode past, then bolted into the brush.
    “Wow,” Alex breathed.
    Up ahead, a mailbox sprouted out of a tangle of flowering weeds, the name “Widows” printed across the side in reflective, stick-on letters. Widows was my aunt and uncle’s last name. Our long trip was drawing to its conclusion.
    To get to the house, we turned down an even narrower path. The car dipped and rocked as we started downhill. At the bottom of the incline, we even had to drive right through a couple of shallow, slow-moving brooks! The water wasn’t very deep, but I imagined the streams flooded the road in heavy rains. We started uphill again, and my aunt and uncle’s house waited for us at the top.
    It was a large building, constructed of mismatched gray and white stones. The front of the house faced the forest, but the lawn was freshly mowed, and planters full of bright flowers were placed here and there around the yard. A split-beam fence separated the yard from the woods, keeping the tangled trees at bay.
    Mom pulled to a stop behind the house.
    A couple of metal bench swings sat in the back yard, along with a picnic table and dozens of bird houses of every shape, size, and color, mounted on tall wooden beams. The back yard butted right up to pastures stretching as far as the eye could see. Much of it was fenced-in, and I saw chickens and goats in the pens and ducks milling around a muddy watering hole. A narrow trail lined with apple trees climbed a hill that filled the horizon. Cattle grazed in the distance.
    A covered shed stood off to the side. In the shed, at least a dozen plump cats prowled around shelves cluttered with tools and a rusty old tractor that looked like it hadn’t been used in years.
    Before we even rolled to a complete stop, Aunt Mary came out of the house to meet us. She looked almost exactly like Mom, only a couple of years older, and she smiled so widely it looked like her face was split in half by teeth. Mom got out of the car and gave her a hug.
    I turned around in the seat and looked at Alex. He shrugged, and we climbed out of the car. We walked up behind Mom and her sister.
    When Mom turned toward us, she had tears in her eyes and a big smile on her face that almost rivaled her sister’s. I’m not sure I’d ever seen her so happy, at least not in the last year.
    “Boys,” she