Read Wild Ice for Free Online Page B

might be wrapped up in nature and topped off with seclusion, but it was as close to reality as she wanted to get.
    “Mom!” Lauren let out an exacerbated breath. “I love this place.”
    “I don’t know what Crazy Aunt Cora saw in that old cottage anyway. It’s out in the middle of god-knows-where surrounded by wild animals. Just come back home and we’ll figure everything out, okay? I promise this whole thing with Daniel has boiled over by now.”
    “ Aunt Cora wasn’t crazy, Mom. And you can’t make that promise. Everywhere I go there’s whispers and pointing. I can’t deal with all that. This is where I want to be. Please respect that.”
    Alicia made a pained noise. It was virtually impossible for her to respect anything about her daughter’s personal boundaries.
    “I want to at least stay the summer to see the orioles and flycatchers arrive.” Then in fall, Lauren thought to herself, the pintails would arrive followed by white-fronted geese and snow geese signaling the beginning of their winter migration. Then in winter, the duck and geese numbers peaked. Lauren knew her mother would throw a hissy fit if she decided to stay that long. Ah, what the heck. Maybe she would. Until she had a reason to leave, Lauren just might stay as long as she wanted.
    “This i s a classic case of avoidance.”
    Lauren rolled her eyes. “I’m not a case , mother. And it’s not like I have a job waiting for me there anyway.”
    “Honey, you’ll find something. A colleague of mine is looking for an intern for the summer. Why don’t you come back and I’ll line up an interview for you?”
    “ No thanks.” Lauren wasn’t cut out for the concrete jungle. Besides, she had her own ideas about how to solve her job situation.
    “Well, okay,” her mother finally gave up the ghost. For now. “You have a sharp mind, Lauren. I just wish you’d use it to help people and not birds .” She emphasized the word birds like they were something heinous. There were worse things Lauren could be interested in. Right. Just try telling that to Alicia Bennett. In her opinion, the sciences of medicine and psychology were the only way to go. The fact that Lauren’s brother was an architect only added fuel to Alicia’s disappointment fire and gave Lauren a twinge of enjoyment.
    “Ooh, my appointment is here. We’ll talk more about this later...”
    “Bye Mom.”
    After speaking with her mother, Lauren decided she had more than enough energy to tackle the yard work outside. Taking her frustration out on the vegetation would be a good way to clear her head of her mother’s nagging voice. Alicia could preach about boundaries and gobble-d-goop about respect to her clients, but somehow those principals didn’t apply to her only daughter. Lauren’s father wasn’t any help either. He just nodded in agreement with his wife and avoided conversation altogether. Psychologists were just as messed up as their clients, Lauren thought with a huff as she grabbed what tools she needed out of the shed. The only difference was the fancy certificates and diplomas hanging on their walls and the extra letters at the end of their names.
    Lauren made quick work of trimming the hedge along the driveway by listening to the birds and identifying them from their songs. She’d have a few more names to add to her list: a ring-billed gull, an oak titmouse and a black phoebe, to name a few.
    By the time she reached the mailbox at the end of the driveway , she’d identified a half dozen of different birds just by sound. After trimming back the bushes around the bright blue mailbox, she ran her hand over the hand-painted hawk. Aunt Cora would never have criticized Lauren for taking some time to regroup after what she’d been through. Why were some people taken from us so much sooner than others? Lauren wondered.
    Before she could ponder the mysteries of life and death any further, she heard a car zooming down the dirt road and turned to see who it was. The road