River & Rue

Preface

. . .

rue

I fell out of a tree and broke my leg when I was eleven. Needed surgery, a brace, the whole nine yards. Missed weeks of school.

It was a whole thing.

I wasn’t supposed to be climbing the maple in our front yard—or any tree, for that matter—but my parents weren’t surprised when they heard my little brother screaming for them. When they came out of the house and saw Teddy sobbing over my writhing body, they didn’t even run.

I still recall my mother’s first words to me when I woke up from surgery. Despite the dizzy delirium of recent anesthesia, or maybe because of it, the memory remains frozen in my mind. As clear and crisp as fresh ice.

“You keep reaching so high, Prudence, and someday the fall will break more than your bones.”

She was right.