Read Online Sarah's Window by Janice Graham - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Janice Graham
Tags: Romance, Literature & Fiction, Contemporary, Contemporary Fiction, Contemporary Women, Women's Fiction
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which their son would travel.
Armand Wilde was not an intuitive man, but perhaps he sensed a certain hesitancy in his son that summer, because while John was busy at his old construction job and bedding Susan in her well-appointed brownstone near the Kansas City Plaza, Armand Wilde made an unannounced side trip to Stanford. He was already in the general vicinity, had been called out West as a consultant for Lockheed and just thought it worth his time to check the classified ads and see what was coming up in the way of rentals that might be convenient for a young man in his first year of doctoral studies. He found just the thing, a little two-room duplex within walking distance of the physics department. He filled out the rental agreement, signed his own name, and put down a deposit that included the first month's rent.
Upon his return he presented John with this fait accompli as calmly if he had just picked up a nice bottle of merlot for dinner.
That's when Hortense faded. Or perhaps she had faded earlier and John had been too busy to notice. That evening John shut himself in his room and dug out the papers from their hiding place in his closet: the acceptance letter, the instructions for training and interviewing that were to take place in August. He read them through again and again, trying to revive their plausibility. He sat on the side of his bed with the letter on his knees, rubbing his sweating palms against his jeans. He would look up at the door and see himself opening it, walking out, finding his father in his study, in his re-cliner, reading glasses riding low on his nose, smooth skull glistening in the light. John would thrust the letter into his gut and bellow like a drill sergeant, "Stanford be damned! I'm going to Africa to teach math to little Kenyans!" Then he would turn and walk back to his room and close the door and lie there in bed with his stomach squeezing out his breath while he waited for that battleship of a man to cruise into his dark waters and destroy him.
Instead, John destroyed the letter. He destroyed every trace of his folly. He had told no one about it; not Susan, nor his mother, nor Robert, not even the comfortingly anonymous workers on his construction crew. He took all the papers out on the job very early one morning, pulled them out from underneath the seat of the Ford Mustang his parents had given him as a graduation present, and burned them in an incinerator behind a new home they were building in Overland Park.
Afterward, he sat on the front steps drinking his Quick Trip coffee while he waited for the other workers to arrive, feeling all the ponderous weight of his decision. He knew all along Africa had been a myth; all he had really wanted was his freedom. Now, as he looked out across the sea of rooftops it occurred to him he might have just incinerated his soul.
He married Susan the week before Christmas in a candlelit ceremony in Lawrence, performed by the most Reverend Simpson in that very church where Hortense had visited him. The First Congregational Church welcomed 512 guests to its sanctuary decked in holly and flocked pine, with tall, flickering tapers playing against the solemn shadows. John had returned from school just two days prior to the wedding, and the whole affair struck him as something out of a dream.
John would be the first to admit that his life set its course at that moment. As his parents had predicted, Susan—the wind in his sails—directed him. Not so much overtly but subtly, because of who she was. Sometimes it seemed to him that she was a Wilde before she was a Blackshere, and so John followed in his father's footsteps. But even if he had wished it, John could never be that battleship he so feared; he was much more like the deep and darkly perplexing waters through which it sailed.
Hortense rarely visited him anymore. Only in rare and troubling dreams, and then she was always disguised somehow, and she no longer had a name.
CHAPTER 12
John had
Armand Wilde was not an intuitive man, but perhaps he sensed a certain hesitancy in his son that summer, because while John was busy at his old construction job and bedding Susan in her well-appointed brownstone near the Kansas City Plaza, Armand Wilde made an unannounced side trip to Stanford. He was already in the general vicinity, had been called out West as a consultant for Lockheed and just thought it worth his time to check the classified ads and see what was coming up in the way of rentals that might be convenient for a young man in his first year of doctoral studies. He found just the thing, a little two-room duplex within walking distance of the physics department. He filled out the rental agreement, signed his own name, and put down a deposit that included the first month's rent.
Upon his return he presented John with this fait accompli as calmly if he had just picked up a nice bottle of merlot for dinner.
That's when Hortense faded. Or perhaps she had faded earlier and John had been too busy to notice. That evening John shut himself in his room and dug out the papers from their hiding place in his closet: the acceptance letter, the instructions for training and interviewing that were to take place in August. He read them through again and again, trying to revive their plausibility. He sat on the side of his bed with the letter on his knees, rubbing his sweating palms against his jeans. He would look up at the door and see himself opening it, walking out, finding his father in his study, in his re-cliner, reading glasses riding low on his nose, smooth skull glistening in the light. John would thrust the letter into his gut and bellow like a drill sergeant, "Stanford be damned! I'm going to Africa to teach math to little Kenyans!" Then he would turn and walk back to his room and close the door and lie there in bed with his stomach squeezing out his breath while he waited for that battleship of a man to cruise into his dark waters and destroy him.
Instead, John destroyed the letter. He destroyed every trace of his folly. He had told no one about it; not Susan, nor his mother, nor Robert, not even the comfortingly anonymous workers on his construction crew. He took all the papers out on the job very early one morning, pulled them out from underneath the seat of the Ford Mustang his parents had given him as a graduation present, and burned them in an incinerator behind a new home they were building in Overland Park.
Afterward, he sat on the front steps drinking his Quick Trip coffee while he waited for the other workers to arrive, feeling all the ponderous weight of his decision. He knew all along Africa had been a myth; all he had really wanted was his freedom. Now, as he looked out across the sea of rooftops it occurred to him he might have just incinerated his soul.
He married Susan the week before Christmas in a candlelit ceremony in Lawrence, performed by the most Reverend Simpson in that very church where Hortense had visited him. The First Congregational Church welcomed 512 guests to its sanctuary decked in holly and flocked pine, with tall, flickering tapers playing against the solemn shadows. John had returned from school just two days prior to the wedding, and the whole affair struck him as something out of a dream.
John would be the first to admit that his life set its course at that moment. As his parents had predicted, Susan—the wind in his sails—directed him. Not so much overtly but subtly, because of who she was. Sometimes it seemed to him that she was a Wilde before she was a Blackshere, and so John followed in his father's footsteps. But even if he had wished it, John could never be that battleship he so feared; he was much more like the deep and darkly perplexing waters through which it sailed.
Hortense rarely visited him anymore. Only in rare and troubling dreams, and then she was always disguised somehow, and she no longer had a name.
CHAPTER 12
John had
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