Read Where Petals Fall for Free Online

throw!” Junie tossed the ball back again, higher than she’d meant to. She inhaled deeply, soaking up the fresh smell of the damp earth.
    Sarah reached high above her head to catch the green plastic ball. Her ring caught the sun, flashing a brief burst of white toward the sky. In that instant, it was the face of Junie’s childhood friend Ellen that Junie saw, not Sarah. Ellen’s hands reached up toward the sky, her silver ring catching the sun—only Ellen wasn’t smiling, like Sarah was. Ellen’s lips were contorted into a wide O , tears of terror streaming down her cheeks. At that moment, twenty-four years after Ellen’s disappearance, Ellen’s screams echoed in Junie’s head, screams Junie could not remember ever hearing when Ellen was alive.
    Sarah tugged at Junie’s arm.
    Junie was paralyzed; sharp pangs surged through her limbs, as if she’d stepped on shards of glass from a shattered vase that appeared years after the vase had been dropped. Her whole body tingled with anxiety. Why was she suddenly seeing Ellen, and why had Ellen looked so terrified? Even worse, why had Ellen’s image replaced her own daughter’s? Junie’s heart thumped against her rib cage. She fought to catch her breath without alerting Sarah to her trouble. The image left her with a sinking, hollow feeling and a gentle tug at the back of her confused mind.
    Sarah stood before her, blond curls blowing in the gentle breeze.
    A chill ran down Junie’s back. What was happening to her? She took a few deep breaths, then crouched, putting her hands on Sarah’s bony shoulders and stared into eyes so blue they rivaled the sky. Junie looked for a hint of Ellen, something that might have spurred the image, but she came away with nothing to root the mistake into reality. Ellen had dark hair and olive skin, while Sarah was fair. Ellen had been as thick as Sarah was slight. I must be overtired , Junie thought. Ever since Brian had taken on his latest court case, he’d been working late into the evenings, and Junie had waited up for him each night, sometimes into the early hours of the morning. Even with the way their relationship had become fractured and strained, Junie still felt the need to wait up. More than that, she still had the desire to wait up, to have those few moments of adult time with Brian, even if they were now filled with tension. Not anymore , she thought. Tonight she’d go to sleep when Sarah did.
    Sarah stood with the ball in her hands, staring at the ground, her eyes sad once again.
    “Sorry, sugar,” Junie managed, brushing Sarah’s bangs off of her forehead. “Senior moment.” She took Sarah’s hand and they walked toward the kitchen door.
    Sarah crinkled her nose, a facial expression Junie had come to interpret to mean that she didn’t understand something.
    “It just means Mama needs some water.”

    Junie thought back to the afternoon Ellen had disappeared. Junie was eating a chocolate ice cream cone, sitting on a two-foot-tall brick wall that surrounded a garden of purple and white pansies and the greenest ivy she’d ever seen. In the center of the garden was a beautiful maple tree, a tree that her father used to say had grown from sugar seeds. Junie remembered the day because it was a Tuesday, and her father came home from work early every Tuesday—or as her father called it, Treatday. Their ritual was to “sneak” out for ice cream each week, just the two of them.
    She remembered that particular day because her father was late, and after waiting for what seemed like forever on the front porch, her mother told her to get in the car, and she took Junie for her ice cream. Her mother had been short-tempered, Junie remembered, because that was as rare of an occurrence as her father not showing up to take her out. It was the only Tuesday afternoon he’d ever missed. Junie was just seven years old, and up until that afternoon, the worst day she’d ever experienced had consisted of being punished for using