Read Online Eureka by William Diehl - Free Book Online Page B

roses.
    His throat closed. He couldn’t swallow.
    â€œDaddy told me about Mr. Eli. Isn’t it wonderful! It turned out so perfectly,” she said joyously.
    She threw her arms around him, hugging him, and her hair swept his face. He kept his hands at his sides.
    She stepped back and looked up at him, and saw something she had never seen before. There were tears in his eyes.
    â€œBrodie . . .” The first hint of apprehension.
    His lips moved but no words came.
    â€œBrodie,” she said, lowering her head a trifle, staring at him, her head cocked slightly to one side.
    He touched her cheek and realized his hand was shaking.
    â€œSomething’s bad,” she said, and tears flooded her eyes. She put two fingers against his lips. “I don’t want to hear anything bad. Please.”
    â€œIsabel . . . I’ve got to . . . I have to go away.”
    â€œWhat do you mean, ‘go away’? Where? Where are you going?”
    He looked at the ground. He could not stand to look at her face, at the tears edging down to her chin.
    He shook his head. “I don’t know. But it’s not fair for me to stay here.”
    â€œFair!
Fair!
”
    â€œLook at me, Isabel. Please. I got nothing. All the clothes I own wouldn’t fill the corner of a closet. I got four hundred dollars in a cigar box and that’s all I got in the world . . .”
    â€œStop it!” she said.
    â€œBen loves you. He can give you everything you want.”
    â€œI don’t care!” she cried, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I love you, and I know you love me.”
    â€œI left a note for Mr. Eli and Miss Madeline, and one for Ben. I’m leaving, Isabel. I’m leaving San Pietro valley for good. It’s best for everybody. Especially you.”
    â€œIt is
not
best for me,” she said, anguish accenting every syllable. “You care about Ben, you care about the Gormans. Don’t you care about me?”
    â€œWe’re just kids,” he said harshly. “It’s puppy love.”
    â€œThat’s what you think?
Puppy love?
” She was crying hard now. “Is that all I mean to you?”
    He couldn’t stand the hurt. He reached out to her but she backed away, into the shadows at the back of the greenhouse. She sat down on the hard earth.
    â€œYou’re just throwing me away.” Her voice was like a whispered wail, a cry in the night, her grief so deep that Brodie did not know how to respond.
    â€œI gotta go,” he said in a voice he didn’t even recognize. “It’s best for everybody.”
    â€œHow do you know what’s best for me?” she moaned. “I thought you loved me. I thought you would protect me and . . .” Her voice dissolved into more tears.
    Jesus,
he thought,
why won’t she understand?
    â€œMy heart hurts,” she sobbed. “It will never stop hurting. You’ve turned my dreams into nightmares.”
    â€œIsabel . . .”
    â€œIf you’re going, then go. Get away from me.”
    He stood his ground for a few moments and then backed down the aisle to the door. He couldn’t tell her there was a crushing hurt in his heart, too.
    As he turned the doorknob, her voice came to him from the darkness.
    â€œI read a poem once,” she said in a voice tortured with misery. “It said ‘First love is forever.’ And I believed it.”

    He ran from the greenhouse, ran to Cyclone, jumped on his back, and rode down the path, away from the Hoffman house and around Grand View and down the precipitous cliff road from the Hill to Eureka.
    The town had gone crazy. It was like New Year’s Eve. The bars were full, men were staggering in the street, shooting their guns into the air. Some of the girls were dancing on the wooden sidewalk. The news was out about Riker.
    Light from town spilled out on the beach, and Brodie leaned back and smacked Cyclone on the rump. He dashed off down