Read Online A Midnight Clear by Emma Barry & Genevieve Turner - Free Book Online

twilight were over. Somewhere in the park, a bird squawked and Joe finally released her mouth. He kept her in the circle of his arms, however.
    “Frances,” he whispered into her hair.
    “Don’t let’s talk now.”
    And they didn’t.

C HAPTER F IVE

    Frances wasn’t surprised or disappointed when she ran into a boy in a blue uniform outside the cleaner’s. After all, she had asked him to meet her.
    “No packages for me to carry?” Joe sounded disappointed.
    She laughed and fell into step next to him. “That was an excuse. No, I had all of Father’s uniforms today, so they’re going to deliver.”
    “I’ll have to find something else to do with my hands.”
    They’d been seeing each other several times a week since the day he’d taken her riding on the motorcycle—and since he’d kissed her witless on the bridge. It had been the kind of kiss that had reduced every other kiss she’d been offered to ashes. Since he’d spent their subsequent dates squiring her around Annapolis on errands and taking her to the pictures to see Ingrid Bergman play Joan of Arc, he hadn’t touched her. Much.
    Today, he extended one of his hands to her and she took it.
    “Where to?” he asked.
    “Home. I have to go over party menus with Colleen.” Joe made a face as if she’d said she had to endure the rack. “Don’t look like that. So much of the Navy is politics, relationships. Plenty of important command decisions are made over the dinner table.”
    “I know that’s true.” Joe led her around a missing brick in the sidewalk. “And yet I can’t help but feel you got pulled into his career.”
    “It’s my family.” She shrugged. “It was what I watched my mother do every day. And when she… well, I started picking up things for her and when she was gone, I just kept doing them.”
    Joe stopped and watched her for several beats. Then he popped his jaw and pointed to a park across the street. “Can you sit with me for a bit?”
    Frances nodded and a few minutes later, they found a bench.
    Joe turned her hand over in his. Finally and very softly, he said, “I like your gloves.”
    “Suzanne knitted them for me last Christmas.”
    “She’s a nice kid.”
    For a long minute, they watched the traffic going by and the pale afternoon sunshine lighting up the buildings. Then Joe said, “You never talk about your mother. Suzanne told me more about her than you have.”
    Could that be true? Yes, probably. Even after four years, Mother’s loss was stark, the dividing line of her life. There was before, and there was after. Her grief was tidal, and even now, there were days when it swept her out to sea.
    How could she say that to Joe, who was never less than sunny and even?
    But how could she have told him nothing of Mother?
    “She… she was perfect. She never got frustrated or overwhelmed. No request bothered her. Nothing was ever too much.” Once she started talking about her mother, the words tended to flow out. “She woke up lovely. Even when she was sick, she was still lovely. Except at the very end, when… I’m sorry, Joe. You don’t want to hear all of this, I’m sure.”
    “I want to hear whatever you want to tell me.” Such steadiness in his warm gaze—that exact shade of brown would always be comforting to her, after this. No matter what happened.
    “At the end, she grew small. She lost a great of deal weight as her illness went on. She was tall, like me. Or I’m tall like her, I guess. But she got fragile. Like a bird. And she’d sit in bed and her nightgown would hang from her shoulders, gaping. I would read to her and I had to keep my eyes on the page because I couldn’t face how diminished she was. I was such a coward at the end.”
    Joe pressed his handkerchief into her free hand. She hadn’t even known that her face was wet. “Sweetheart, you weren’t a coward. You were a kid.”
    Frances daubed at her cheeks. “If she could stand it, I needed to. She was the one who was