Read Online Crazy in Love by Luanne Rice - Free Book Online Page B

remembering how Clare and I had adored prank calls as children.
    None of the betrothed, however, could distract me from the well-publicized news that Mona Tuchman had suffered a miscarriage. One night I was standing at the sink, chopping vegetables, imagining the conversation she and I would have, when I heard the seaplane. I checked my watch: nine-thirty.
    For a moment I tried to ignore the droning engine. I had a terrible superstition, from which I was trying to escape, that the plane would crash if I wasn’t actually watching it. When I was young I had believed the Red Sox would lose if I didn’t watch them on TV, that my father’s ship would sink on a trip to the other hemisphere if I wasn’t standing on Water Street waving goodbye when he left. On his last, doomed trip, he had flown to Scotland from Boston. I had kissed him goodbye in Woods Hole, but in order to attend a birthday party had stayed behind while Honora drove him to Logan Airport. Remembering that lapse in vigilance, I dropped the knife and hurried to the porch door. Through the trees I saw the plane’s lights angling down. They seemed to skim the top of the privet hedge. Then I heard the small splash as the plane landed.
    Nick came inside and shook off his jacket. His lean face was tired but smiling. By this time of June it was usually more tan.
    “It’s good to have you home,” I said.
    “Oh, what a day it was,” he said, following me into the kitchen, watching me start dinner.
    While dinner cooked we changed, Nick into striped blue pajamas, I into my white nightgown. I always washed it with strong bleach to keep it looking nearly blue, a prediliction I had picked up from Liza Jordan during my days as her maid. We sat on the sofa. My back against the sofa arm, I stretched my legs across Nick’s lap. He touched my toes. I stared at the white fabric draped across my knee, its folds deep lavender in the shadowy lamplight. Just one lamp burned beside us, and I loved the way it isolated me and Nick together, leaving the rest of the room dark.
    “No one looks as comfortable as you do,” Nick said. “The way you snuggle into a sofa.”
    “I’m a sloth.”
    “No, that’s not it. Remember that Whistler exhibit at the Freer?”
    During law school one of Nick’s favorite ways to relax was to visit the Freer Gallery on Sunday afternoons. We had loved the Chinese screens, the lacquered writing boxes, and the Peacock Room, but Nick had especially enjoyed an exhibition of Whistler’s watercolors. I knew what he was going to say.
    “I think of those paintings a lot,” he said. “The women looked just like you, even if they didn’t resemble each other. The way they reclined on those chaise longues, or curled up in chairs to read. They were beautiful, such small paintings, but vivid. The expressions on the faces . . . you looked at one woman, all comfortable in a chair, and she’d smile at you with the most intelligent eyes. Or maybe she’d just been crying. That’s how I think of you. Your face can’t hide anything. Right now you look so happy. Your face is so pretty and happy.”
    “You’re home. We’re together.”
    “I know. That’s what makes you happy.”
    “You know that and yet you begrudge me the chance to rendezvous with you on late nights in New York. Some husbands would actually find that romantic.” We were together and times were easy; I could joke about it when Nick was touching me.
    “I find it romantic. But sometimes I find it exhausting. You know there are times when all I want to do is call room service for a BLT.”
    “What did you do today?” I asked. “Are you exhausted?”
    “Not really. Broadsword is on hold, so I negotiated the basics of an agreement between two companies who want to form a joint venture in Great Britain. It was pretty exciting—we drafted and signed a letter of intent before lunch.”
    “You mean their two companies will be joined as one?”
    “Only in a matter of speaking. The two