Read Online The Realm of Last Chances by Steve Yarbrough - Free Book Online Page B

inspecting two casks of wine that had begun to ferment. He had gone there at first light, and it was past eleven o’clock before he had finished drawing off the wine and returned home. Between the columns of the veranda, which exuded a musty smell from its damp flagstones, his gamekeeper was standing waiting for him, holding a letter
.
    “What do you want?” the General demanded brusquely, pushing back his broad-brimmed straw hat to reveal a flushed face. For years now, he had neither opened nor read a single letter. The mail went to the estate manager’s office, to be sorted and dealt with by one of the stewards
.
    She stuck her finger in the book and closed it, unable at the moment to progress beyond the first page. The other night, after Cal grilled steaks and they sat outside with their neighbor and consumed two bottles of Cabernet, Matt had insisted they walk over to his place so he could loan her his copy of the best novel he’d read in the last two or three years. He hadn’t invited them inside, just let them wait on the porch while he pulled it off the shelf. When he mentioned the book at dinner, she hadn’t recognized the author’s name—Sándor Márai—but kept that to herself because she could tell Matt thought surely she would’ve known his work. Later, this failure to admit her ignorance troubled her and was the main reason
Embers
had lain untouched on her bedside table until this morning. She’d been spending her daily commute familiarizing herself with work-related documents like the faculty handbook, which listed the school’s policies on tenure, promotion, professional leaves and sexual harassment.
    Holding the novel in her lap, she looked out the window at the houses the train was passing, each right next to the other, and even at this relatively low speed they all blurred together. Perhaps because she was finally back on the East Coast after so many years, she’d been thinking a lot lately about the house she grew up in, the neighborhood where it stood, her mother and father and the people who lived next door.
    At one time she’d felt as much at home in the Connultys’ house as her own, and the couple’s daughter had been her best friend. Her initial bond with Patty was their mutual fondness for something almost everyone else in her circle would have deemed disgusting. They became aware of it a couple of weeks after the Connultys moved in. Until then, they’d studied each other warily through the line of mountain laurel that formed a porous barrier between their backyards. They were ten or eleven at the time and, since it was summer, hadn’t yet met in school. But Mrs. Connulty came by one morning and invited them all to dinner, and though Kristin begged her parents to let her stay home since it was Thursday and her favorite
Bewitched
episode would rerun that night, they told her she needed to make friends with the girl next door. “Just imagine,” her mother said, “how you’d feel if you didn’t know a soul in the world.” She said the family had moved from Allentown and that Mr. Connulty was the new manager of the Pennsylvania Power & Light plant at Shamokin Dam.
    Afterward, Kristin couldn’t remember what they’d eaten for dinner, though Patty always maintained they had middle-of-the-road fare: roast beef with mashed potatoes, stewed carrots, Brussels sprouts. Dessert, she said, was strawberry shortcake. While the adults sat in the spacious living room and enjoyed an after-dinner drink, the girls were told to go upstairs. A tall, large-boned woman with thick auburn-colored hair, a soft voice and an unusual accent, Mrs. Connulty said, “On your way, look in the pantry. You might find you some treats.”
    The kitchen closet was the kind you walked into, big enough for two girls their age to stand side by side. “Her idea of a treat,” Patty said, “might seem a little bit weird.” She’d barely spoken all night, and Kristin had already decided that she didn’t want to be