Read Online Time After Time by Antoinette Stockenberg - Free Book Online Page A

grateful,
sir."
    Cornelius made some
ofthand, dismissive remark and went back to his tête-a-tête, and
Liz and Netta began cleaning up the wrappings.
    Feeling herself like an
indentured servant, Liz was reconsidering whether to bother with
the puppet show. But the children were getting into Caroline's
presents, upsetting her, and Liz was forced to distract them while
Netta spirited the gifts upstairs.
    As she sat the children —
little too forcibly — down in their chairs, Liz wondered anew that
East Gate housed neither wife nor mother. The mansion seemed oddly
empty with no one but poor old Netta shuffling around in it. Liz
shook her head. A bachelor and an apparently estranged husband:
these guys were hell on women. Well, it wasn't her lookout. All she
wanted to do was finish the godforsaken assignment and go
home.
    Her standard routine was
to sit alongside the kids and wait with them a minute or two for
the show to begin, then announce that she was going backstage to
see what was holding it up. Today she did just that. Her heart,
meanwhile, started to beat more excitedly, as it always did before
a performance.
    What the heck, she thought, fully in the spirit of the show as
she slipped the puppets over her hands. It's not the kids' fault I can't drive a decent
bargain.
    She peeked through the
hidden peephole and saw their faces all aglow with expectation. She
was completely enchanted by this part: by the little squeezy things
the children did with their hands, and the way they grinned and
nudged one another with their shoulders as they waited and watched.
They were so full of joy, so willing to be made happy. Their eyes
were huge; they didn't want to miss a thing. It made no difference
how rich or how poor, how blond or how brown they were; kids at a
puppet show were all the same, and Liz loved them desperately,
every one — even Caroline.
    Showtime.
    Up popped the girl-puppet,
a wide-eyed charmer named Misha. "Oh dear oh dear oh dear!" Misha
said in Liz's high-pitched voice. "If I can't find him, I don't
know what I'll do!"
    Out strolled the boy
puppet, a mophead named Kris with a skateboard on his shoulder.
"Can't find what, Misha?" he asked in a slightly less high-pitched
voice.
    "My pet turtle," explained
the girl-puppet. "He's gone! I think he ran away!"
    "If he could run, he
wouldn't be a turtle," the boy-puppet said breezily. "What's his
name?"
    "Tommy," said the
Misha-puppet. "Tommy Turtle."
    Through her peephole Liz
was surprised to see Jack Eastman stroll over and join several of
the parents who were standing off to one side, where they had a
view of the show and the children at the same time. She watched
nervously to see how Eastman would react to her innocuous little
script. He looked, she had to admit, bemused but rather
bored.
    Okay, she thought. It's not Phantom of the
Opera. But you're not exactly a Broadway
producer, pal.
    Kris the boy-puppet was
busy peeking under the drapes and calling Tommy the turtle, when up
popped another boy-puppet, a big hulky kid wearing a baseball cap.
"Yuh?" he said in Liz's deeper voice. "What do you
want?"
    "I want Tommy."
    "I'm Tommy."
    "You're not a turtle!" said Kris, much to the delight of
the laughing kids.
    And meanwhile Liz was
watching the oldest and pickiest member of her audience — and he
was actually smiling. Smiling! His face, earlier so tight with
repressed anger, had an expression a lot like the ones the kids
were wearing. Liz couldn't take her eyes away from him; he was so
much more attractive in this unguarded moment. She liked everything
about him just then, from the way his dark hair tumbled over his
forehead to the way he folded his arms across his chest, relaxed
and at ease for once.
    Then she saw him notice
the children themselves, all of them gleeful and enchanted by the
puppets' antics. It was as if he'd glanced out a window and
discovered half a dozen rainbows on his property. His expression
mellowed still more, into one of tender,