With Every Breath Read Free

run off and left her. It wasn’t a place that Maddie had ever spoken of, and certainly not to her ex-husband. She didn’t even remember it so much as she had been told that she had lived there, and that a piece of her had died there. And that brought a dark, deep-rooted anger. She had been rejected, abandoned. When her parents had left her, she’d been all of nine.
    And now she was back, because what better place was there to hide Josh until his father was found? The island’s only access was this ferry. Rick could hardly grab Josh and run from Candle, not unless he planned to swim twelve long miles. And he didn’t know the place existed. It was the only thing that could ever have brought her back, and she thought it was a brilliant strategy.
    She turned on the Volvo’s engine and fiddled with the heater. Josh leaned forward to put his hands in front of the vent. Maddie’s heart kicked. That was good. Not words, not quite, but good.
    The sins of the fathers, she thought. History repeating itself, eerily, almost cunningly, but she had pulled herself out of her own silence, and she could pull Josh out of his, too.
    "It’s still cold air, honey. Here, do this until it warms up." She stuck her hands beneath her thighs and sat on them. Josh followed her gesture.
    The ferry chugged around into the cove and nosed its way up to the first dock. She still didn’t think anything looked familiar, but suddenly Maddie felt a little squeamish at the thought of getting off the ferry, of actually being on the island.
    "We’ll have to get some groceries," she rushed on, her teeth chattering. "I already sent money to the realtor. She has a house all ready and waiting for us. We’ve just got to go to her office and pick up the key." The ferry engine died. An incomplete silence fell, the hum of the other automobile engines sounding muted beyond the window glass of the Volvo. She noticed that Josh was leaning forward in his seat again, this time to peer out the windshield. She wondered if his throat felt as strangled, as unnaturally tight, as hers once had.
    The cars began rolling off the boat, and Maddie fell into line behind them. They drove onto a paved road that curved around to the north. She realized that the island was only three blocks wide. She could see water at either end of each side street. She knew from looking at a map that it really was shaped like a candle, with the boat cove at the handle, complete with a spit of land at the top that looked almost like a flame. But a flat image on paper hadn’t really given her a clear perspective. She hadn’t expected the land to be so narrow. It wasn’t long, either. Before she could blink, they came up on a small business district.
    She slid the Volvo into the first available parking space she came to. They had passed a diner a little way back, just at the point where the road had turned. It was a place out of middle-American history, with plenty of shiny aluminum, and red-and-white-striped awnings. She saw a school on a side street to her left, small and square, white with a blue roof. A post office and the city hall sat directly in front of it. There was a Methodist church next to them, and a spattering of retail stores to her right.
    "Come on," she said to Josh. "Let’s bundle up and take a look around."
    He got out after her, taking her warning literally. Though his coat was already zipped, he clutched the front of it as though the cold, buffeting wind might wrench it open again.
    Maddie bit her lip and smiled. She loved him so much. Sometimes it was stunning, overpowering, at least for her. A grin from him, a childish reflex, or one of his old bursts of delighted laughter, and its full force would slam into her out of nowhere, almost robbing her of breath.
    She took his hand, and they started up the street side by side. They came to a liquor store first, then a drugstore, then a market. Farther up on the next block she saw a sidewalk cafe, its outdoor patio already barren of