Read Online Five Days by Douglas Kennedy - Free Book Online Page A

Even if it is a destination I already know – and one that’s just a small jump from the place I call home – travel is travel. A temporary escape.
    I turned into our driveway. The reclining rays of an unusually bright autumn sun reflected off the new roof of our house. A two-story house, somewhat squat, finished in off-gray clapboard that I would love to darken by two shades if I could ever find the $9,000 our local house painter told me it would cost to redo the entire exterior (and it really needs it). Just as I’d love to landscape the half-acre of land that fronts it, as it has become rather scrubby. Behind us, however, is a wonderful oak tree that, right this moment, is almost peacock-like in its autumnal beauty. Sometimes I think it was the tree that sold me on the house – as we bought it knowing it was a fixer-upper, a starter place from which we’d eventually graduate.
    But enough of that (as I tell myself most days). We have raised two children here. It’s our home. We worked hard to buy it. We continue to work hard to keep it (though the last mortgage payment falls in seventeen months – hurrah). It is our history. Only now can I honestly say that I’ve never warmed to the place. Nor has Dan. How I wish we’d talked ourselves out of ever buying it.
    Our home.
    I thought that as I pulled up our driveway and saw Dan sitting on the bench that covers most of the front porch, a cigarette between his lips. As soon as he spotted my car pulling up he was on his feet like an anxious schoolboy, dumping the cigarette onto the porch deck and then trying to hide the evidence by kicking it into the crabgrass below. Dan has been allegedly off cigarettes for six months – but I know he smokes several every day.
    â€˜Hey there,’ I said, all smiles as I got out of the car. He looked at me sheepishly.
    â€˜It’s the first cigarette in over a week,’ he said.
    â€˜Fine,’ I said. ‘Good day?’
    â€˜I took the job.’ He was staring down at his feet as he said this.
    At that moment I felt relief and a terrible sense of guilt. Because I knew that the last thing Dan wanted to do was accept that offer in the stockroom. Just as I knew that he knew the breathing space that extra money would bring us. I tried to take his hand. He stiffened and pulled away, putting his hand behind his back, out of reach. I said nothing for a moment, then uttered two words:
    â€˜Thank you.’

Four
    MEATLOAF. DAN HAD prepared a meatloaf. He’d used his mother’s recipe – covering the loaf in Heinz’s tomato sauce and flavoring the beef with three cloves of crushed garlic (a recipe, he’d told me on several occasions, that was somewhat radical for Bangor, Maine, in the 1970s . . . when garlic was considered nothing less than foreign). He’d also made baked potatoes and a fresh spinach salad to accompany the meatloaf. And he’d bought a bottle of Australian red wine – Jacob’s Creek – which he told me that ‘the guy at the supermaket said was “very drinkable”’.
    â€˜That’s high praise from a guy at a supermarket,’ I said. ‘I really appreciate you going to all this trouble . . .’
    â€˜Thought we should celebrate me landing the job.’
    â€˜Yes, I think that’s worth celebrating.’
    â€˜And I know you’ve got your book thing with Lucy at seven.’
    â€˜That still gives us an hour – as long as the meatloaf is ready by—’
    â€˜It will be done in fifteen minutes.’
    â€˜Wonderful. Shall we open the wine?’
    He reached for the bottle and screwed off the cap, pouring wine into two glasses. He handed me one and we touched them.
    â€˜To your new job,’ I said.
    â€˜I never thought I’d be toasting a job in a stockroom.’
    â€˜It’s a supervisor’s job . . .’
    â€˜Assistant supervisor.’
    â€˜Still,