Darci waved the embossed certificate under her sister’s nose. “Don’t you realize it’s a red-letter day? I’m not letting you mess this up.”
Grabbing at the cream-colored document, Kara tried to take it from Darci, and in the brief tug, the paper ripped in two.
“No!” Darci shouted.
Startled at her sister’s vehemence, Kara dropped her half, and Darci snatched it.
“I didn’t mean for it to tear.” Kara regretted that she’d reacted in anger. “But I still don’t like it.”
Darci breathed out slowly. She set the two torn halves on the coffee table, fetched the roll of clear tape, and knelt to patch the rift, all the time ignoring Kara. When she was done, she sat back on her heels and held the certificate up to inspect it.
“It’s still ruined, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m going. You can’t stop me.”
No, she couldn’t, Kara knew. “I just wish you would reconsider.”
“Never,” Darci said, underlining the word with a scowl.
“Ever since Mom died, you’ve been . . . ” Kara tried to put words to her observation. “It’s almost like you have a death wish.”
With her scowl deepening, Darci stood up. She hugged the patched paper, wrapping her arms tightly across it. “Mom would have wanted me to do this. She trusted me—she trusted both of us to do what we were meant to do. For me, this is it.”
Kara pushed away the memories of those last days of their mother’s life, the IV drip of pain medicine, the odor of bleach, the gaunt frame of the woman who’d brought them into the world. What was it Kara was meant to do? She still had no idea at twenty-five, but Darci was different. Three years younger, she burned with a mission.
And to be accepted into the Gloved Force was an achievement few people earned. Kara had been astonished when Darci broke the news. Her sister, a Glover. To learn those secrets . . .
“It’s dangerous.” Kara tried not to sound pathetic. “You’re so young.”
Darci’s face softened. “Life is dangerous. Every single day. You never know which hour will hold your last breath.” She moved across the room to sit next to Kara. Laying the certificate to one side, she picked up Kara’s hand and held it between her own. “If I can do this thing, and I know that I will, and I should die as a consequence, I’ll still be fulfilled.”
Kara saw the steeliness in her sister’s eyes. When did my kid sister grow up? “When do you leave?”
Darci smiled then, accepting Kara’s olive branch. “Monday.”
In five days.
“Let me give you something.” Kara brought back from her bedroom a maroon ring box. She ran a finger over the crushed velvet. “This was Mom’s.”
Darci opened the lid and sucked in a gasp. A slim gold band inlaid with three red sparks.
“Rubies,” Kara said. “‘One for each of us,’ she told me.”
Her sister removed the ring and held it to the light of a lamp, her eyes glistening.
“Mom said to give this to you when you were ready to fledge,” Kara said. “Go fly.”
Some of Dianna’s Books
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The post promised an autumnal birding phenomenon not to be missed. Steph wasn’t really a birder—she could never tell one sparrow from another—but she did like birds.
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An overnight stay at a small New England inn proves a challenge when the guests in the next room launch their own plans for the evening.
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In the shade of a red maple, Ana helped spread the tablecloth over the picnic table and stepped back to let her family lay out the food: tuna salad, pasta salad, chips, grapes, strawberries, brownies, muffins.
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Emma worked her way through the tables of used books laid out at a community fair in Bucks County. Books! As if she didn’t have enough of them on her bookcases and her bedside table. Balancing an armful of books—mysteries, a literary classic, two romances—she spied a familiar cover.
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The night the eyes appeared in the window for the fourth time was the night Casie moved to the guest room, leaving Benjamin to sleep alone in the master.
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Wonderful story. In an age when many young people are afraid to fledge, this gives hope that wings will get them there if they try.
Thanks, Dan. I’m glad you enjoyed the story.