Read Online Fortune's Hand by Belva Plain - Free Book Online Page B

killing me.”
    â€œI thought Lily was just here with you.”
    â€œShe was, God help her, and me, too.”
    â€œDo you want to tell me the whole story? Begin at the beginning.”
    It was, in a way, a relief to pour it all out, as in the confessional. In another way, it was painful to reveal such deep emotion so shamelessly.
    â€œEddy, I can’t lose Ellen. So you see—”
    â€œIs this what love is? Geez, I know I never felt anything like it.” Eddy put a kind hand on Robb’s shoulder. “I’ll tell you something, though. You’d better come clean with Lily, and right away, too.”
    â€œI know that all too well! I guess I don’t have guts enough to tell her the truth. She’s so trusting! It’ll be like beating a child.”
    â€œBut you’ve got to. You can’t marry her now, can you, feeling the way you do? That would stink! Listen. This’ll be like an operation, cutting the foot off to save the leg. A clean job, and then recovery.”
    â€œExcept for the missing foot and the scar, Eddy. I’ve asked myself a hundred questions: Had I been losing that first red-hot desire for Lily anyway? Without realizing I was losing it? I know I’ve been busy here and loving it all, the work and the city and friends, even before I met Ellen. I haven’t been as eager to go home as I was the first year. I see that now. And then, then I met her … I sit in class or in the library, I walk across the campus, and it seizes me, the thought of her—” He gave a rueful laugh. “You know what I mean? It’s a sudden weakness, like coming down with something. Am I a weakling? Tell me if I am.”
    â€œYou? A weakling? You just have a big, soft heart. Other guys break off all the time without any agony. You’ve got to harden your heart and do it. Get it over with.”
    â€œI’d rather have all my teeth pulled.”
    â€œYou want me to go with you?”
    â€œThanks, it would look queer, and it’s queer enough already.”
    â€œI’ll lend you my car.”
    â€œEddy … When I walk in there, I won’t know how to behave.”
    Eddy shook his head sadly. “That sounds strange, coming from the man I hear in moot court.”
    â€œThis is awfully different. I’m not even sure that I should phone first that I’m coming, or else simply surprise her.”
    â€œPhone first. That’ll give her half a notice that your business is serious, nothing to scare her, but enough for her to expect something important. Do it. Do it Sunday, and no fooling around.”
    Eddy’s expensive new car rolled smoothly down the interstate past the fatal spot where the truck had hit and changed the course of Robb’s life, and turned a few miles beyond it onto the service road that had been there before the interstate was built. His destination was looming up too fast. For all his rehearsals, he still was not sure how he would begin.
    The service road diverged like a branch from a tree trunk into the two-lane blacktop road that led to Marchfield. On either side, like twigs from the branch, dirt lanes with grass between the ruts led to farmhouses invisible from the road. It seemed to Robb that he had lived here in another age, although it was only threeyears since he had left, and he had thought—or thought he thought—that he was content.
    A moccasin slid across the road in front of him, raised its evil head for a second, and disappeared into the underbrush. An ominous portent, he thought, and reprimanded himself. Fool! The snake was there because there was a swamp nearby.
    Three miles to Marchfield. He lightened pressure on the gas pedal. Please, God, help me to do this right and get it over with. He entered the town. Christmas had come to Main Street with lights strung across its width, Santa Claus and tinsel garlands in shop windows. On a side street past the center, he stopped the