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.Brett was at the clinic and the kids were in school.Sera was sleeping in a nest of pillows in the living room.Glory picked up a triangle of chicken-salad sandwich and started to take a bite.But she couldn’t.Her sister’s eyes reproached her.She set the sandwich down.“Look, I shouldn’t have let it happen.And it’s not going to happen again.” Angie only stared at her.“You can just stop looking at me like that, please.It was just…one of those moments, you know?”“One of what moments, exactly?”“We were talking.…”“You and Bowie, you mean?”Glory nodded.“Really talking.About the past, you know? About his moving to town and about Johnny.And then, Bowie got up to go and…oh, I don’t know.It just happened.”“Let me get this straight.You kissed Bowie for the first time in…what, seven years?”“Actually, it was seven years and three months ago.In October.October 28, to be specific.It was the day before he went behind my back and told my parents I was pregnant to get them to put the pressure on me to marry him.I refused to kiss him ever again after that.I mean, until last Wednesday.”Angie gave her one of those way-too-knowing looks.“October 28.Amazing.You still remember the exact date.”Glory put up a hand.“Don’t say it, please.”Angie put on her innocent look.“Say what, Glory?”Glory picked up her sandwich again, resolutely bit into it and chewed.Thoroughly.“It’s been a week since it happened, okay? And there has been nothing—nothing—since then.I see him two, three, even four times a day.I have breakfast and dinner with him.Nothing.”“Nothing,” Angie echoed, but in such a way that she implied everything.“Nothing.” Glory said it again because she knew that Angie was not getting the point.“It was…a fluke, that’s all.Just one of those things.”“Was it good?”“What do you mean was it good?”“You know exactly what I mean.”Glory ate another potato chip.And another after that.Angie watched her, a relentless kind of watching.Finally, Glory cried, “Yes! All right? It was good.It was really good.And I want to kiss him again.I want to do a whole lot more than kiss him.I seriously do.” She stuffed yet another chip in her mouth and chewed it furiously.“I don’t know what it is about that man.He’s my weakness.He’s always been my weakness.All these years, everything that’s happened, and still the feeling is there.I mean, come on, that can’t be normal, can it? Everybody knows that the whole sex thing lasts only for so long between two people.”Angie was smiling much too sweetly.“So they say.”Glory groaned.“I’m happy for you and Brett.I mean, it’s great if you two can keep the passion going.”“Yes, it certainly is.”“But I would just as soon not have that going on with me and Bowie.”“Well, maybe the feeling will go away.It could happen.”“Hah.That’s not what you think, Angie.I can see on your face what you really think.”“I’m only trying to be supportive.”“Hmm.He’s teaching Johnny to whittle, did I tell you that?”“Johnny hasn’t been back to the clinic for more stitches, so I’m guessing that’s working out all right.”“Johnny loves it.He’s always in the workshop lately.As soon as he gets home from school, he rushes right through his homework so he can get out there and be with Bowie—who is whittling him a train set.Did I tell you that?”“Yeah, you did.”“Ah, that’s right.I guess I did.” Glory stared out the window near the table.The sky was gunmetal gray and a blanket of snow covered the ground.Sometimes lately, it seemed that it had been winter forever, that the spring would never come.Angie asked, gently, “Is Johnny calling him dad yet?”“Not yet.It will be a while, I think.But I can feel it coming.”That night, after Johnny went back across the yard to the house, Bowie watched for a light in the kitchen window.The light would mean Glory had come downstairs for a last mug of tea.She came down most nights.He would see the light in the window and make himself wait to go inside and brush his teeth until at least ten minutes after the light went out.He’d been doing that—making himself wait to go inside at night until she was settled upstairs—the whole time he’d been staying in the workshop.The past week, though, he’d wanted to go in while she was still up, to talk to her, just the two of them, with honesty and frankness, the way they’d finally done last Wednesday night.The night he’d kissed her.The night she’d kissed him back.The kiss had been amazing.Too bad it had also ruined everything.He knew she regretted it.He’d seen regret in her eyes every day since then, at breakfast and again at dinner—and any other time of the day he happened to be in the same room with her.He’d seen her regret and her worry that he was going to try and kiss her again.Well, he wasn’t.No way.Even though the memory of that kiss would probably dog him to his grave—the memory of that kiss, and all the kisses they’d shared way back then.He loved kissing her.He loved the feel of her small, soft body against him, the taste of her mouth, the scent of apples and rain.…Too bad.Memories would be all he would have from now on and he accepted that.He’d also decided that he couldn’t sit out here every night and wait for her to go to bed, all the while wanting only to be in there with her.It was silly.Stupid.Why shouldn’t he go in and visit with her? They were two adults who had shared a kiss when they probably shouldn’t have.It wasn’t the end of the world.He had things to tell her [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]