Excerpt
“Oh look, Rachael!”
Rachael had been staring out the window but she hadn’t seen the herd of deer grazing in the snowy field behind a barbed wire fence. There were millions of them, all big ones, pawing at the ground, then munching on grass they apparently uncovered with their hooves.
“There are no baby deer,” Rachael said.
“No, they don’t have their babies until spring. It’s too cold for them now. We’ll have to come on a bus trip again in the spring, won’t we?”
Rachael nodded her head. In the spring … if she and Bobby were still here.
Once they had passed the deer, she saw nothing more of interest – just miles and miles of snow-covered fields with a few poplar bushes here and there, and the occasional farmstead. After about two hours they stopped beside a small café with a Coca-Cola sign hanging in the window. The nice driver said they would have a fifteen minute wait there, so they went inside the café where Mrs. Milligan ordered coffee for herself and hot chocolate for Rachael.
“Would you like a cinnamon bun, dear?”
“No, thank you,” Rachael said. Either from excitement or apprehension, or both, her stomach felt too squeezy to eat anything. For most of the rest of the way to Calgary, Rachael slept with her head on Mrs. Milligan’s shoulder.
As they neared the city centre, she roused and looked out the window. She could hardly believe what she saw. Big buildings, more than she had ever seen in her life; cars, trucks and busses moving in every direction; and people hurrying along sidewalks. Where were they all going? Did all of them live in this city? How would they ever find Bobby and Ronnie and Auntie Tyne in this?
The bus pulled into a spot beside other busses, and when he had shut off the motor, the driver got out to help the passengers off. He held out his hand to Rachael and steadied her as she stepped down. “Well little lady, did you like the ride?”
Libros Libertad 