Page 79 of Summer of Salt

The sun was shining.

And Prue was holding my hand.

You couldn’t ask for much more than that.

I’d seen the ferry before, of course, many times, but somehow, today, it looked smaller.

“Are you sure this thing is seaworthy?” I whispered to my mother.

“I vomited twenty-seven times on the way over,” Pruesaid, overhearing me, dragging her suitcase out of the back of the truck. “But I survived.”

“You’re going on a great adventure,” my mother said.

“Oh no. Are you going to cry?”

“Fernwehs don’t cry,” she said quickly, wiping at her cheeks.

Without warning, she threw her arms around me and hugged me so tightly I couldn’t breathe.

When she let go, she was not crying, but her eyes were wet and red.

“I’ll write to you every day,” she said. “I’ll even use a telephone. You know how much I hate the phone.”

“And email?”

“And smoke signals, and carrier pigeons,” she added. She kissed the tips of her fingers and then pressed them against my cheek.

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

She got back in the truck but didn’t drive away. I saw her shoulders shaking, her hands covering her face.

“Georgina? Are you ready?” Harrison asked.

I hadn’t thanked him for everything he’d done, for showing up at Peter’s trial and speaking out for my sister and for believing me without so much as a moment’s hesitation.

“Harrison,” I began.

He held his hand up. “It doesn’t need to be said.”

“But you did so much.”

“Not any more than any decent birdhead should have done.”

“Then I guess you’re the only decent birdhead.”

“Nah, cut ’em some slack. They’re old. And mass hysteria is a dangerous drug. Let’s not forget Salem.” Then, darkening, “That probably wasn’t the best parallel I could have made.”

“An apt one, though. A literal you-know-what hunt.”

“I’ll never let them burn you at the stake,” he said, and bowed to me, and I addedperson who bows to other peopleto my growing list of things I knew about Harrison Lowry.

Harrison and Prue started up the gangway from the dock to the boat. I followed afterward, but only made it halfway up before I heard my name being shrieked at a deafening pitch from behind me.

I turned.

Vira, of course, leaping off a bright-yellow bicycle and running toward me with her arms out and wide. She flung herself into me so hard we fell backward on the gangway.