When the Wind Blows - James Patterson [119]
Most everybody on the porch had tears spilling from their eyes, including General Hefferon and his wife, and even a few MPs.
Max and Matthew were wrapped in the arms of a handsome-looking couple in their late thirties. I knew their names, Art and Teresa Marshall, and that they were good people from Revere, Massachusetts.
Icarus was being hugged by a slight-looking woman who was down on her knees and had one of the brightest, biggest smiles I’ve ever seen.
Oz was in the arms of his birth mom. She was cooing softly in his ear. Oz was cooing back to her.
Something had finally gone right for the children. I stood there holding Kit, and tears streamed down both our cheeks. I was almost blind with tears, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of the children and their mothers and fathers.
“Let’s fly for them,” Peter started to chirp in his unmistakable, high-pitched voice. “C’mon, let’s show everybody. Come with me, Wendy. Let’s go, slowpoke. Let’s fly as high as we can.”
“Peter! Don’t you dare!” It was Max calling from across the porch. The crackling sound of her voice stopped Peter in his tracks. He rolled his eyes and then he grinned.
“We’ll all fly. We’ll do it together,” Max said then.
And that’s what they did.
The children ran across the front lawn together and they took to the air like an amazing flock. They whistled so that Icarus could keep up. They rose up over the rooftops of the houses, the surrounding magnolias and towering southern pines.
They floated effortlessly in the cloudless baby-blue skies.
It was so unbelievable to be there, like nothing anyone had ever seen in the history of our world, certainly like nothing the mothers and fathers had experienced before.
Just to watch the beautiful children fly like birds.
Special eBook Feature:
Excerpt from
James Patterson’s
The Lake House
IT SURPRISES SOME READERS that When the Wind Blows (featuring Max and the gang) is my most successful novel around the world. Who knows why for sure, but I suspect it’s because an awful lot of people, myself included, have a recurring fantasy in which they fly. They treasure it. On the other hand, there are plenty of folks who won’t fantasize or play make-believe. They wouldn’t have gotten to the Neverland with Peter Pan. There is one other thing that might be interesting to those who read this book. When I researched it I interviewed dozens of scientists. All of them said that things like what happens in The Lake House will happen in our lifetime. In fact, a scientist in New England claims that he can put wings on humans right now. I’ll bet he can.
So settle in, you believers, and even you Muggles.
Let yourself fly.
IT SURPRISES SOME READERS that When the Wind Blows (featuring Max and the gang) is my most successful novel around the world. Who knows why for sure, but I suspect it’s because an awful lot of people, myself included, have a recurring fantasy in which they fly. They treasure it. On the other hand, there are plenty of folks who won’t fantasize or play make-believe. They wouldn’t have gotten to the Neverland with Peter Pan. There is one other thing that might be interesting to those who read this book. When I researched it I interviewed dozens of scientists. All of them said that things like what happens in The Lake House will happen in our lifetime. In fact, a scientist in New England claims that he can put wings on humans right now. I’ll bet he can.
So settle in, you believers, and even you Muggles.
Let yourself fly.
Prologue
Resurrection
The Hospital, somewhere in Maryland
At about eleven in the evening, Dr. Ethan Kane trudged down the gray-and-blue-painted corridor toward a private elevator. His mind was filled with images of death and suffering, but also progress, great progress that would change the world.
A young and quite homely scrub nurse rounded the corner of the passageway and nodded her head deferentially as she approached him. She had a crush on Dr. Kane, and she wasn’t the only one.
“Doctor,” she