Read Online Cult by Warren Adler - Free Book Online Page A

that. Religion wasn’t a dominant factor in our lives. Nay. I swear to you. This was out of the blue.”
    â€œShe never visited her sister before?”
    Barney shook his head.
    â€œNo. Seattle is a long trip. She thought Kevin was too young to leave. Besides, she and her sister weren’t that close, not during the years of our marriage. Oh, they called, spoke. But it was always brief.”
    â€œThen why this visit all of a sudden?”
    â€œIt wasn’t all of a sudden. She had planned for it for months. It was her sister’s birthday.”
    â€œA sort of reconciliation?”
    â€œI thought so. She did not enjoy their being distant. There was guilt in it for her. It bothered her. I thought it might be a good thing. Fat lot I knew. It was a set up. She probably got brownie points for bringing in a sibling.”
    His continuing forbearance encouraged her to proceed. She expressed what stirred beneath the surface. “She was younger,” Naomi said impulsively.
    â€œTen years. Not a lifetime.”
    â€œI mean when you married her.” It had been in her mind from the beginning, and she had calculated it. “Kevin is four. What was she eighteen, nineteen? That’s pretty young.”
    â€œShe was young. No question.” He looked at her. “Okay, so I robbed the cradle.”
    It was a couple of years after they had split, Naomi calculated—her Pyrrhic victory. At least it was not a rebound. Perhaps he had pined for her. It had taken all her will not to call him after they had gone their separate ways. Finally, years later, she had dialed his number. It was a weak moment, a lonely time. She remembered as soon as the ring began she had hung up. The irony galled her, now that he had called her.
    She marveled at his patience as he surrendered to her questions. Throughout, he had been only mildly defensive. She tried to recall him as he was, but couldn’t draw a true bead. Time did change people—some people—she decided, wondering if it had changed her.
    â€œI think I know what you’re getting at, Nay.”
    â€œI wish I knew.”
    â€œI think, whether or not you know it, you’re trying to come up with a valid, logical reason for what happened to Charlotte. Did she think she had missed something by getting married so young?” He said it calmly. Obviously, he had been over this ground before. He answered his own question.
    â€œProbably. I won’t deny it. I can’t say she ever expressed it that way. Doesn’t everybody think they missed something now and then?” He kept his eyes averted from her face. Nevertheless, she felt the rhetorical question was directed at her.
    â€œMaybe you thought you were communicating with Charlotte, but you really weren’t.” Her present conclusion was that men and women never truly communicated, not on every level. It was something, a flaw perhaps, or some protective mechanism built genetically into the genders.
    â€œMaybe so,” he sighed. Was he comparing Charlotte to her, remembering? Had he smothered Charlotte with his willingness to do anything to win her, to become what she wanted him to be? Had he succeeded in becoming that, whatever it might have been? She remembered what he had done to win her, Naomi. In the end, she, too, had looked for her exit.
    Possible explanations began to fill her head, engaging her mind against all conscious design. Charlotte had married too young. Barney had prodded her, Naomi speculated, rushed her. Hadn’t she experienced at first hand his anxiety to build his home, his infernal nest? Perhaps, he was panicked by his missing out on finding a mate, a family maker. After all, six years had gone by since her, since Naomi.
    Barney had given Charlotte, say, a year of grace. Then Kevin had come. Kevin was now four. Charlotte hadn’t seen much of anything. She might have been a virgin, known no other men. She had been trapped by love, that