Through the Flames Read Free

him to believe before it was too late. But knowing it was probably true, even believing it, didn’t mean Ryan was accepting it for himself. Because what Vicki Byrne had said was right. If he bought into it, it meant he was admitting that his parents had missed out and were in hell. That was too much to take in just now.
    Ryan knew something the other kids didn’t know. Well, except maybe Lionel. Lionel seemed to know Ryan better than Ryan knew himself. What only Ryan, and maybe Lionel, knew was that Ryan had no intention of doing anything that would cause him to leave Judd’s house. He had never felt or been so alone in his life, and these kids were his new family. Whether or not he became a Christian, he was not about to leave them or let them abandon him.
    Yeah, they treated him like a baby and used names for him that made him feel even smaller and younger. But he had been acting like a baby. He had a right. He was an orphan. The others were enduring the loss of their families too, but this was different. Ryan needed time away from the pressure, time to think, time to do something to take his mind off everything. He had to admit he was afraid to go out alone at night, so while it was still light, he headed out on his bike.
    The others had seemed so concerned with his packing up his stuff that they would likely watch to see if he took it with him. They would be relieved, he hoped, to find everything still in his room. It was packed and stacked, though, so they could wonder if he was eventually going to leave, based on what decision he came to. But his decision, at least about staying at Judd’s, was already made.
    It made Ryan feel a little better to know that the others seemed to want him to stay regardless. He knew they wanted him to become a Christian, but that didn’t seem to have anything to do with whether he stayed around. Was it because they really cared for him? Were they actually worried about him and looking out for him? He couldn’t figure that one out. He had never cared about anybody else that much, except maybe Raymie.
    Ryan wanted to work on his courage. Could he ride into his own neighborhood and past his own house? And if he could, could he also see what was happening at the Steeles’? He sure didn’t want to ask them about Mrs. Steele or Raymie, because he knew both Mr. Steele and Raymie’s big sister Chloe had to feel terrible about their vanishing. Maybe they’d be like his aunt was a few years ago, who seemed to want to do nothing more than talk about Ryan’s uncle at his uncle’s funeral. That seemed so strange. You’d think she would have been so upset she wouldn’t want his name even mentioned. But she had talked about him nonstop. She even asked people to tell her their favorite stories about him.
    â€œSit here with me for a minute,” she had said, taking Ryan’s hand. “Tell me about that time your uncle Walter was trying to teach you to fish and he fell into the lake.”
    â€œOh, Aunt Evelyn,” Ryan had said, feeling sheepish and awkward. “You know Uncle Wally did that on purpose. I mean, I was only eight, but I knew that even then.”
    Aunt Evelyn had leaned back in her chair and laughed her hearty laugh, right there in the funeral home with people filing past the body of her husband. Many turned to stare at the insensitive person who would be guffawing at a time like that and were at first shocked, then pleased to find it was Aunt Evelyn herself.
    â€œI saw the whole thing from the porch of the cottage,” she had said, wiping away her tears of laughter. Ryan thought it funny that she usually cried when she laughed, but of course maybe this time she was covering her real tears of sadness. “I just knew what he was going to do because he had done it to me when we were first dating. He stepped on one side of the boat and then the other, and he kept saying, ‘No problem. No problem. Shouldn’t