Read Online Antonia Lively Breaks the Silence by David Samuel Levinson - Free Book Online Page B

drive?” she asked, though when she said it, she recalled hearing a rumor that he no longer drove.
    â€œNo, thanks,” he said, removing his glasses and wiping the smudged lenses on his shirt. He glanced toward the end of the block, toward Antonia’s house, a faint, unseemly smile on his face. Then he said good night and bounced away, whistling. Catherine didn’t need him to tell her where his sudden buoyancy came from—a young woman waited for him a few houses away. She almost wanted to follow him, just to see him enter the house, remove his shoes and socks and leave them by the door, go into the bedroom. Just to hear what he might or might not say, what might or might not go on between them, this man thirty-odd years the girl’s senior. How had they met, and where? Had he seduced her or the other way around? What was she doing with him? More important, though, Catherine thought, why do I care as much as I do? With that, she went back into the house, determined to forget about all this, wishing she’d never mentioned the cottage to Henry, wishing Antonia had never come to her door.

The Weight of It in Her Arms
    _____
    The more Catherine tried to forget about Antonia and Henry, the more they haunted her. The next day, she thought about them whenever the door of the bookstore opened and she looked up to see a father and daughter, whenever she glanced out the windows and caught a glimpse of a girl with blond hair, whenever Catherine passed the front table—the new arrivals—and saw Henry’s book. Thoughts of them came to her as Wyatt still came to her, and she found herself angry at the indulgence. Stop, she thought, just stop. But she couldn’t. She imagined the previous night differently, that it was Antonia who’d been late because she’d been writing, that Antonia had fallen in love with the cottage and had taken it on the spot. She imagined coming home to find Antonia on the patio, smoking, the cottage lit up behind her, sharing an inaugural glass of wine with her, asking all the questions she’d been burning to ask.
    Yet as the day wore on and the store grew busy, Catherine did finally end up forgetting about them, recommending books to customers, ringing up their purchases, chatting with them about the endless heat. By the early afternoon, she’d completely forgotten about Henry and Antonia until there was a decided lull and Jane said, “So I hear Mr. Pulitzer Prize is moving in.”
    â€œI’m sorry?” Catherine said. “What?”
    â€œLouise told me. She was up at the hardware store this morning,” she said. “Apparently, Henry was with his daughter picking out a window shade and talking about your cottage.”
    The news took Catherine aback. She hadn’t had time to tell anyone about Henry and the cottage.
    â€œHe doesn’t have a daughter,” she said.
    â€œYou aren’t seriously going through with this, are you? Not after what—”
    â€œYes, Jane, I am,” she said. “So, please, just drop it.”
    â€œIf you really want to rent it out, put an ad in the Winslow Gazette, ” she said.
    She thought fleetingly about all the kooks and weirdos the ad might attract. At least Henry isn’t a complete stranger, she thought.
    â€œI can always just set the cottage on fire, then walk into it,” Catherine said.
    â€œNot amusing,” Jane replied.
    â€œNo, but here’s something that is,” she said, suddenly angry. “I’m almost forty and I still eat my meals over the sink and wash them down with red wine. It’s fortunate that Wyatt and I never had children because what if we had? Then I’d be one of those sad women you see at the grocery store, a kid on her hip, digging crazily through her purse for her last dollar . . . ”
    â€œDeep breaths,” Jane said. “We’ve talked about this before. Let me lend you some money.”
    â€œYou know how