Read Online Watching Amanda by Janelle Taylor - Free Book Online Page A

was a knock at the door. She jumped and almost dropped the pan of chicken on the peeling linoleum floor.
    She slid the pan into the oven, took off her apron, and padded to the door. She listened for a moment, then looked through the peep hole. No one was there.
    Which didn’t mean someone wasn’t lurking underneath or to the side of the door.
    Amanda eyed the chain lock and the deadbolt. There was no way someone could get inside. Between the locks and the “burglar bars” on her fire escape window, she was safe.
    She glanced out the living room window. A man stood in the shadows of a courtyard across the street. He appeared to be looking up—at Amanda’s window. At Amanda. She looked at her son, so happy in his high-chair. This was no way for her to live—for Tommy to live—jumping out of her skin. The brownstone offered a potential new life. For Tommy’s sake, she’d take it.
    Â 
    It didn’t take long to pack. Amanda wished it had taken much, much longer. That’s how unprepared she was to move into her father’s brownstone. But she really had no choice but to go now. The letter had been clear about the date and she had decided to follow the rules unless or until they became intolerable.
    Jenny and Lettie were over to help. Amanda had decided she couldn’t afford the apartment without a job anyway, and she’d just figure it out when the time at her dad’s was up. Lettie was packing Amanda’s small bookcase, mostly cherished books and photo albums. She opened Tommy’s very first album, with at least a hundred pictures of him the first few weeks of his life.
    â€œWho’s this hunk?” Lettie asked, holding up a Polaroid picture that had been tucked inside the album.
    Paul Swinwood.
    Tommy’s father.
    Amanda couldn’t bear to put the one photograph she had in the album as though it belonged there; nor she could bear not to include it, somehow. It was the only photograph she had of Paul, and one day, Tommy would surely want to see a picture of his father.
    â€œThat’s Tommy’s dad,” Jenny answered for Amanda when it was clear Amanda couldn’t answer.
    Lettie put the photograph back. “Ah. I hope I didn’t upset you, dear. I don’t know much about your personal life, but I do know I’ve never seen a man in this apartment.”
    â€œIt’s all right, Lettie,” Amanda said. “The thought or sight of Paul lost the power to hurt me a long time ago.” How she wanted that to be true, and how it wasn’t. “He disappeared into thin air when I told him I was pregnant.”
    And took with him my heart and my trust....
    Tommy had his father’s glossy, thick dark blond hair, but other than that, he looked like Amanda. She was grateful for that.
    â€œI’m sorry, sweetheart,” Lettie said.
    â€œI have Tommy,” Amanda said. “That’s what matters.”
    Lettie squeezed her hand.
    â€œI’m going to miss living down the hall from you, Lettie,” Amanda said. “You’ve been so wonderful to me, such a good friend. I don’t know what I would have done without you to watch Tommy. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate all you’ve done for me.”
    â€œIt’s been my pleasure,” Lettie said. “And now I’ll get to come visit you in a fancy schmancy townhouse off Central Park West!”
    Amanda smiled. “I do hope you will come, Lettie. Especially because all of my father’s crazy instructions will make it almost impossible for me to venture too far from the brownstone.”
    Jenny wrapped the last glass in newspaper and put it in a box. She marked it where it was going and taped up the box. “Your life is about to change, Amanda, for the much, much better. I’m so proud of you for agreeing to fulfill the terms of the will!”
    I’d wait on that pride for at least a month , Amanda thought, her stomach