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Prologue

A Final Farewell

Astrid stood on the side of the lake, the perfect skipping rock gripped tightly in her left hand. Her mind drifted back to the last time she saw her brother.

“No. You hold it like this.” Her brother’s tone had been firm, but his touch had been gentle as he took her hand. Then he laughed as he tried to adjust her grip, moving the stone from the palm of her hand to her fingers. “I don’t know how you manage to do things with the wrong hand. But I should be able to at least help you get the right grip.”

“It’s not wrong, Evan,” she had said and then said the first thing that came to mind. “Youuse the wrong hand.” Her defiant scowl at him had the dissatisfying effect of making him laugh.

He reached out and rubbed the top of her head, messing up her brownish-red hair and pulling a few strands out of the braid their father had struggled to fasten about an hour earlier.

“Hey!” She had protested, further messing up her hair by putting her hand on it and trying to flatten it. “Stop messing up my hair!”

“Sorry, little lady. I keep forgetting that you are getting too old for that kind of affection.” He put on a serious face andsquatted down next to her. “Ok. Let’s try this again, and I’ll use my left hand too. But you have to promise to go easy on me.”

Six-year-old Astrid had twisted her mouth to the side, debating if she should allow herself to lose this precious chance. If her brother were to throw the rock with his left hand, she knew she had a shot at doing better. She felt confident that she could do it, and the idea of holding back was not something she wanted, not when she saw victory right in front of her.

“No!” she said definitely. Turning to face the water, the young Astrid lobbed the rock at the water. It went into a large arc, and once it reached the peak, the rock plummeted down, hitting the water with aplop. Her brother smiled at her, and she looked down, too upset to hear what he had to say. He placed a hand on her shoulder.

“Hold on. I’ll get you another shot. That rock was too perfect to just let it rest at the bottom of the water.” He patted her shoulder and stood up. The shadow he cast over her moved forward as Evander walked the short distance to where the rock had hit the water; his pants rolled up to his thighs so they didn’t get wet.

“There are so many rocks here! Why are you gettingthatone? That rock doesn’t work!”

He reached down and picked up the offending item, then headed back to her, casually tossing the stone in his hand. Her brother was so relaxed and happy as he returned to her. Astrid couldn’t believe he was leaving soon. Once he reached her, Evander crouched beside her again.

“It’s never the rock’s fault, Astrid. It’s the person whothrewthe rock. See?” He dropped it, and the rock hit the coarse sand, creating an indentation that poorly mimicked what would happen when the rock hit the water.

“You just dropped it.”

“Exactly. I didn’t do anything except stop holding it, so the rock just dropped straight into the ground.”

“Water is better.”

He sighed, but the smile still pulled at the corners of his lips. “Yes, we know that you prefer water. But not all of us can use it like you do.” Evander’s gentle green eyes looked toward the water, and for a moment, he was quiet. Astrid had shifted on her feet, recognizing when her brother was thinking. He always knew what to say after thinking.

“Look at the water out there,” he finally said, pointing to the small body of water slowly rippling away from the stream that fed into it.

His words felt a bit insulting. “What about the water?” She wasn’t really interested in a long talk about adult things – all Astrid wanted to do was to learn how to skip rocks before he returned to the military.

“When you aren’t focused on it, the water just sits there, right?”

“Yeah. I knowthat.”

“Well, when you want, you can make it dance.”

“But I don’t understand why you can’t make it dance. Shouldn’t you be able to?’” It was a question she had asked many times before that day, but no one ever gave her a good answer.

This time was no different.

Evander looked at her and said, “Because I don’t know how. Just like you don’t know how to skip a rock.”

She looked down at her hands. “Do you want me to teach you?” Her fiery green eyes looked up at him as a gentle breeze moved her hair around her head like an angry reddish halo. In her mind, all her brother needed to do was to try, to focus. After all, that’s all she had to do.

He smiled, “Maybe you can try when I get back. For now, we should focus on teaching you how to skip rocks.” Hisexpression shifted a little, “It’s an important lesson that every kid should learn.”

“Why?”

He grabbed another rock off the ground, stood up, and threw the new rock along the surface of the water. It skipped from the shallow end all the way to the small waterfall on the other side. His eyes looked down at her again. “Because by the time you master it, you’ve learned a lot of important lessons.”