Read Online A Father for Philip by Judy Griffith; Gill - Free Book Online Page A

you made so far, Kath?” she asked to change the subject. She was enjoying
a vacation from Grant and his sometimes oppressive presence.
    The two talked of many things for the
next couple of hours, sipping iced tea, and sewing industriously until Eleanor
broke up the work by saying, “Want some cookies?”
    They left the shady arbor over which the
buds of week before it burst into golden massive perfumed blossoms which bobbed
on the breeze in thick, short-stemmed clusters, attracting bees and
hummingbirds.
    In the cool kitchen Eleanor poured more
tea into tall, frosted glasses, added thin twists of lemon, placed the glasses
on a tray with a plate of cookies and carried it all through to the living
room. Kathy was sitting in an overstuffed chair, shoes off, feet propped on the
coffee table, her hands clasped complacently over her belly. She grinned at
Eleanor.
    “Don’t mind, do you?”
    “Of course not,” Eleanor assured her
friend. “Have I ever?”
    “Well, the last time we came for dinner,
Grant gave me one of his looks when I put my feet on the coffee table.”
    “This is my home, not Grant’s, and if he
doesn’t like my rules, he knows where to put them. In my household coffee
tables were meant to be foot stools. Want a pillow under your feet?” Without
waiting for a reply, she lifted Kathy’s feet and slid a cushion under her
heels. “Besides,” she added, feeling a touch wistful, “pregnant women deserve
to be pampered.”
    Oh,
heavens! Am I really feeling envious of a woman with that enormous girth?
    “Did you and Grant have a fight, Ellie?”
Kathy asked with sympathy.
    “Sort of,” Eleanor replied, still
looking at Kathy’s big tummy.
    “Why don’t you marry him? And in no time
at all you could look just like me.”
    Eleanor laughed for a moment at the
proudly pregnant woman, then sobered. She knew a genuine interest in her
welfare prompted Kathy to ask such a personal question—friendship, not idle
curiosity—and she replied in the same spirit.
    “I haven’t agreed to marry him because I
don’t think I love him. I’m not even sure he loves me, Kath.” She went on to
describe the happenings of the night the dinner date and ended saying, “if he
actually loved me and didn’t just want me, physically, he’d never have made
that crack about my being frigid. It was insulting.”
    “Maybe the guy’s just getting desperate.
Lord knows he’s hung around long enough for you to make up your mind sixteen
times. What is it, four years?” At Eleanor’s unhappy nod, she went on. “Well,
after that long, even the most patient of suitors has a right to get a little
frustrated.”
    “I’ve told him many time, he’s not
obligated to stick around. It’s been his choice. And it’s only been the past
few months that I could have been said to be ‘free’, and even now I’m not...
Not legally, unless I have David declared dead.”
    “Are you going to?”
    “I don’t know, Kathy. I honestly don’t
know.”
    “Do you still hope you’ll come back?
Still love him that much?”
    “I don’t know that, either, Kath. But I
do know if he did come back, say today, he’d be a different man from the one
who left me here, and I might not care for him at all. In fact if he did come
back, he’d have to have an awfully damned good reason for having stayed away so
long or I wouldn’t have a thing to do with him.”
    “Well, I guess not!” exclaimed Kathy
indignantly. “After all, a man can’t just walk out for seven years and expect
to come charging back whenever he feels like it.” She ran her fingers across
the empty cookie plate Eleanor had placed on the end table beside her chair,
within easy reach.
    “More?” asked Eleanor, and at Kathy’s
pleased expression, rose and went to the kitchen to refill the plate. She let
out a squawk of alarm and poked her head back through the doorway. “Hey,” she
asked Kathy, “did you hear the screen door squeak open?”
    “No. Why, is it