The Visions of Ransom Lake Read Free Page B

rocks, and moss, and in the silence of the secluded area, the ramble of the brook sounded like the music of heaven itself.
    “ This is it,” Vaden whispered aloud. All her life, wherever the family had lived, she had needed her own place—a secret, tranquil vicinage of her own where she could escape and think or mourn or simply sit. At home she had found such refuge beneath an ancient lilac tree on the family’s property. It was a difficult place to reach, for it required crawling on one’s hands and knees through the dirt to reach the open space behind the tree. Its troublesome accessibility was one of the reasons she loved it so. No one, especially Yvonne, was willing to crawl into it to retrieve or bother her. Certainly this brook was more publicly approachable, but her heart loved it immediately, and it was fairly well hidden by the enormous trees along its banks.
    Vaden watched a large maple leaf float gently through the air, landing quietly on the surface of the water. It traveled away from her as the water babbled on, and she smiled, knowing autumn was nearly upon this blessed part of the world. Oh, how she loved autumn! To Vaden Valmont, there was nothing so beautiful as the earth in autumn. Reds, yellows, oranges, greens, and even purples captured the leaves of trees, bushes, and vines. The air was crisp and cool and fresh, and apples and pears abounded. She inhaled deeply of the fresh country air and thought of what it must be like to watch harvest erupt in a small western town such as this. Certainly the aroma of baking apples with cinnamon and sugar or pumpkin laced with nutmeg would sweeten the air nearly every evening as women set their pies to cooling on windowsills. No doubt wagons laden heavy with pumpkins would ramble down the road through town when whoever owned the monstrous pumpkin patch began to harvest it. She envisioned a wagon overflowing with ripe, refreshing watermelon ambling awkwardly down the road, an ill-placed melon falling from the wagon and breaking open as it hit the ground. She smiled to herself as she thought of small boys dressed in tattered trousers and dusty shirts rushing to the ruined fruit to snatch up sections of it, dirty or not, and delightedly devouring it without any thought to the sticky juice dripping from their chins and elbows.
    Sighing contentedly and glancing at the sun hanging low in the sky, Vaden let her feet carry her from the celestial view of the bridge and its brook and back toward town. She hated to leave the brook and the bridge, the watermelons ripe for snitching, and the marvelous fields of pumpkin. Still, as she turned the corner and saw her Uncle Dan standing on the porch of the mercantile looking down the street in her direction, her heart leapt, and she waved to him.
    “ Vaden!” he hollered as he hurried to meet her.
    Vaden’s smile only widened as she watched him lumber happily toward her, his charmingly bowed legs giving him a funny, awkward appearance. His hair was nearly white where it once was dark, and the wrinkles around his merry eyes were plentiful from many years of smiles and laughter.
    “ Uncle Dan!” she exclaimed as he reached her, at once taking her in his strong and merciless embrace.
    He chuckled, his husky voice wonderfully familiar. “Vaden! You’ve grown up, girl! Just take a look at ya.” Dan held Vaden away from him for a moment as he studied her carefully. “Dang! You can’t be that same little girl who used to sneak in on me when I was sleepin’ at night and stick beans up my nose.”
    Vaden laughed and shook her head. “Uncle Dan, you know I was so small then.”
    “ Yeah, I know. But it just weren’t too comfortable a way to wake up—them hard ol’ lima beans in my nose.” They both laughed.
    “ It just always seemed to me when I was little that people’s nostrils were made for more than breathing in and out of,” Vaden explained, giggling at the memory of her Uncle Dan shouting as he sat up from a deep