Read The Scattering for Free Online Page A

there wasn’t much reason. I saw the way you like the evenings out here.’ There she goes again, Jessica thought, spouting her insight and her wisdom.
    â€˜You got a daughter, too. I know coz I seen her pictures. That must be her room with all the covers in it.’
    â€˜It is,’ answered Jessica, quietly.
    â€˜You waiting on her to come home, too?’
    â€˜I am,’ Jessica replied, swiftly pulling on her garden gloves. She tugged at the tiny sprouts of weeds peeping up through the clay. She felt a surge of anger course through her that she could not reasonably explain to herself. Except that she knew this blood-rush always came whenever anyone would try and talk her out of waiting for Tina to come home. Not that Ashleigh had done that. But had she, Jessica would have sorely wanted to rip the child’s heart out.
    â€˜What are these things anyway?’ Ashleigh asked, turning to the crates with their inch-high shoots.
    â€˜These? Why these are my Christmas roses. Except they’re not really roses. That’s just a nickname they got.’
    â€˜What are they, then?’ Ashleigh asked.
    â€˜Hellebores. They bloom early. Around January. They’re poisonous. But I don’t grow them to eat them,’ Jessica replied.
    *
    Ashleigh and Olivia had been signed up by Bobby Jean for a term at Bay City High. Three days into term, Cole Spencer, the Head, called Jessica.
    â€˜No, it’s not Olivia, Jessica May. It’s Ashleigh. Look, I just think you should come down here, soon as you can.’
    When Jessica arrived at Bay City High it was quiet. All the times she’d been in that school for Tina or Jules she’d never seen it as calm. It was like it was shut or Christmas. Cole Spencer rushed into the foyer and asked her to hush as he led her into the assembly hall. All the students sat around quiet as mice, the teachers behind them, arms folded. She noticed that Miss Quigley was crying. Miss Quigley was as stern as iron so Jessica thought that maybe someone had died. Until she saw who it was they were sitting around listening to. Up front, by the stage, on a small classroom chair, her long pale legs all tied up around each other like pea vines – Ashleigh, talking animatedly about the hurricane.
    â€˜It’s not just Katrina,’ whispered Spencer.
    â€˜What else is there?’ asked Jessica.
    â€˜A whole lot of what else. She says… well… she says she’s the daughter of God .’ A cold shiver ran down Jessica’s back. Mad as the words Spencer had just said sounded, they went a long way towards explaining the unnerving self-assurance she herself had observed in Ashleigh.
    â€˜Don’t be crazy, Cole. She’s a kid. It’s just a turn of phrase.’
    â€˜Listen to her, and watch their faces. She’s hypnotic. I’m telling you, the child is gifted. From the beginning of lessons this week she’s been dazzling every teacher in her Grade. She says she got the gift out in the floods. From the hurricane itself.’
    Jessica looked around at the rapt faces of the children. They were all engrossed in Ashleigh’s tale. Which seemed to be about how, when the whirlpool started up in the river, Ashleigh had stood up and demanded it fall away, and how it did just that, and how when the waters parted she walked on dry land to the other side of the river to rescue her sister, Olivia.
    In the following weeks the store was the busiest Jessica had ever seen it. People came to buy flowers and wreathes and winter shrubs, but mostly they came to see the girl who had been touched by God in the hurricane. Even when they didn’t ask directly to see Ashleigh, or point her out to each other, Jessica knew that was why most people came to the store. (It had never been busy at this time of year.) On Saturdays, when Ashleigh would help out, Jessica would see old women or sick-looking people whisper into the girl’s ear to see if