Sometimes, Moses and his grandma would go for bike rides and walks, and she would haul him into the pool in Nephi almost every day, which had always made me so jealous. I was lucky if I got to go to the pool more than a few times all summer. When I was desperate for a swim, I’d ride my bike to a fishing hole up Chicken Creek canyon. My parents had forbidden me to swim there because it was so cold and deep and murky—dangerous even. But drowning was preferable to never swimming at all, and I’d managed not to drown so far.
As Moses got older, there were some summers when he didn’t come to Levan at all. It had been two years since he’d been back, though Kathleen had been pushing for him to come stay with her permanently for a long time. The family told her he would be too much for her to handle. They told her he was “too emotional, too explosive, too temperamental.” But apparently, they were all exhausted and they gave in. So Moses moved to Levan.
We were both entering our senior year, though I was young for my grade and he was a full year older. We both had summer birthdays—Moses turned eighteen July 2nd and I turned seventeen August 28th. But Moses didn’t look eighteen. In the two years since I’d seen him last, he’d grown into his feet and his eyes. He was tall with broad shoulders and clearly-defined, ropy muscles that covered his lean frame, and his light eyes, strong cheekbones, and angled jaw made him look more like an Egyptian prince than a gang banger, which rumors claimed he was.
Moses struggled with his school work and had difficulty concentrating and holding still. His family even claimed he had seizures and hallucinations, which they attempted to control with various medications. I heard his grandma telling my mom that he could be moody and irritable, that he had difficulty sleeping, and that he zoned out a lot. She said he was extremely intelligent, brilliant even, and he could paint like nothing and no one she’d ever seen before. But all the medication they had him on to help him focus and sit still in school made him slow and sluggish and made his art dark and frightening. Kathleen Wright told my mother she was taking him off all the pills.
“They turn him into a zombie,” I heard her say. “I’m willing to take my chances with a kid who can’t hold still and can’t stop painting. In my day, that wasn’t a bad thing.”
I thought a zombie sounded a little safer. For all his beauty, Moses Wright was scary looking. With his tapered body covered in bronze skin, and those funky-colored, light eyes, he reminded me of a jungle cat. Sleek, dangerous, silent. At least a zombie moves slowly. Jungle cats pounce. Being around Moses Wright was like befriending a panther, and I admired the old lady for taking him on. In fact, she had more courage than anyone I knew.
Being one of only three girls my age in the whole town made me a loner more often than I liked, especially considering neither of the other girls liked horses and rodeo the way I did. We were friendly enough to say hello and sit by each other in church, but not friendly enough to spend time together or pass the boring summer days in each other’s company.
It was an especially hot summer. I remember that well. We’d had the driest spring ever recorded, which led to summer wildfires popping up all over the west. Farmers were praying for rain and the sizzling nerves and sky-rocketing temperatures made tempers short and self-control shorter. There’d also been a rash of disappearances throughout the clustered counties of central Utah. A couple of girls had gone missing in two different counties, though one was thought to have run away with her boyfriend and the other was almost eighteen and her home life was bad. People assumed they were okay, but there had been a few similar disappearances in the last ten or fifteen years that had never been resolved, and it made parents edgy and a little more watchful, and my parents were no exception.
I’d grown restless and resentful, itchy in my own skin, eager to be done with school and on with life. I was a barrel racer and I wanted to hitch the horse trailer to my truck and follow the rodeo circuit, seeking freedom with only my horses, my projected rodeo winnings, and the open road. I wanted that so badly. But at seventeen, with disappearing females in the forefront of their minds, my parents wouldn’t let me go on my own, and they weren’t in any position to take me. They promised me we’d figure something out when I graduated and turned eighteen. But graduation was so far away, and summer stretched out in front of me like a dry, empty desert. I was so thirsty for something else. Maybe that was it. Maybe that was the reason I waded in too far, the reason I got in way over my head.
Whatever it was, when Moses came to Levan, he was like water—cold, deep, unpredictable, and, like the pond up the canyon, dangerous, because you could never see what was beneath the surface. And just like I’d done all my life, I jumped in head first, even though I’d been forbidden. But this time, I drowned.
Read THE LAW OF MOSES now!
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About the Author
Amy Harmon is a Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and New York Times Bestselling author. Her books have been published in eighteen languages, truly a dream come true for a little country girl from Utah.
Amy Harmon has written thirteen novels, including the USA Today Bestsellers, Making Faces and Running Barefoot, and the Amazon #1 Bestseller, From Sand and Ash. Her novel, A Different Blue, is a New York Times Bestseller. Her recent release, The Bird and the Sword, is a Goodreads Best Book of 2016 nominee. For updates on upcoming book releases, author posts, and more, join Amy at www.authoramyharmon.com.
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Other Titles
Young Adult and Paranormal Romance
Slow Dance in Purgatory
Prom Night in Purgatory
Inspirational Romance
A Different Blue
Running Barefoot
Making Faces
Infinity + One
The Law of Moses
The Song of David
Historical Fiction
From Sand and Ash
Romantic Fantasy
The Bird and The Sword
The Queen and the Cure
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Amy Harmon, The Smallest Part
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