Read Lessons From Ducks for Free Online Page B

noticed him.
    And then for the second time in five minutes Anna found she had lost the ability to breathe.
    She was frozen in place, mouth open slightly, eyes wide and staring at the child standing in front of her. All colour drained from her skin till she was left milky white, like freshly fallen snow. The boy had never seen snow, but he did have a grandmother who had gotten very sick and died once. Before she died she went the same colour as the woman before him now was. He frowned nervously.
    “Dad?” he called over his shoulder.
    Anna started to shake. “No,” she mouthed softly, reaching out a hand towards the boy, who was starting to regret his decision to approach her.
    The boy took a step away from Anna. “Dad!” he called again, louder this time, and with a fearful tone. It worked and a man appeared seemingly from nowhere to scoop the boy up into his arms.
    “What’s up?” the man asked the boy. The boy squirmed until his father put him back down – he was too old to be picked up in public - and pointed at Anna.
    “I think there’s something wrong with her,” he whispered loudly to his father. “She looks like nanny did before she became a star in the sky.”
    The man appraised Anna, her arm still outstretched - although it had drooped somewhat – her mouth still formed in the shape of the letter O.
    “She does a bit, doesn’t she,” he remarked. He took a step closer to Anna and tilted his head to one side like a budgie.
    “Hello there,” he said jovially, “please excuse my son’s intrusion, he was raised by wolves.”
    When this failed to evoke the expected chuckle, or even a smile, he tried the direct approach.
    “Excuse me, but are you feeling ok? You look awful.”
    Anna couldn’t look at him, gave no sign she had even heard him. She was transfixed on the boy, her eyes tracing the contours of his face, the way his cheek curved down towards the small dimple in his chin. The way his lashes curled up so when he blinked he had the look of a baby deer.
    “Ben?” she finally said, gently like a breeze through wispy curtains, the word dissipated in seconds.
    The man looked behind him in case someone else had approached, but there was just his son. He narrowed his eyes, concerned, and stepped to the right so his body became a shield between them. She seemed harmless, delicate even, but you never could tell these days. You heard stories. His ex-wife was full of them, scanning the news sites on the internet all day and warning him about all the bad things that could happen every time he collected Oscar. ‘Don’t let him out of your sight even for a second!’ she’d warn him.
    “I’m sorry,” the man said, “but I’m afraid you’ve mistaken my son for someone else. Are you sure you’re ok? Is there someone I can call?”
    For the first time the woman looked at him, and when she did he felt himself fall briefly, like he’d tripped on a crack, and he became woozy on his feet. It was her eyes. They were like whirlpools sucking him in.
    “Dad?” Oscar said, breaking the spell.
    He blinked. “Yes?”
    Anna gave a little sob and the sound was the saddest thing he could ever remember hearing. Her eyes were sorrowful now, but nothing more than that. All the emotion he’d seen, in its most pure and rawest form, was now gone.
    “Lady I don’t know who you are but you’re really starting to freak me out. Are you sick? Has something happened?”
    Anna shook her head wordlessly.
    “Well something’s wrong, that much is obvious. How about you just stay sitting right here and I’ll call an ambulance, or the police.” Perhaps they could get to the bottom of the mystery the man thought, reaching into his pocket for his cellphone.
    “No!” The volume of her voice startled him and he dropped his phone. The corner of it hit the concrete first and the back separated from the front, the battery landing somewhere between the two.
    “Dammit,” the man swore.
    “That’s the fourth phone