Alice Hoffman by Second Nature

Author:Second Nature [Nature, Second]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Published: 2012-01-30T14:39:43+00:00

Kay was in the kitchen, considering the pamphlets she’d picked up at the travel agency, when she noticed that Stuart was leaving.

He came to the back door. Kay could see him quite clearly through the window, he had shaved and showered, and his clothes were clean and pressed. His overnight bag was slung over his shoulder, and he carried the bucket and mop Robin had bought him. He slipped the key to the third-floor office under the doormat, and then he did the oddest thing: he went right up to the door and kissed it, with a kiss so tender Kay found that she’d begun to cry. Suddenly, she had the feeling that she didn’t have the faintest idea who Stuart was, and that she never had, and that she probably would never see him again. When he had gone, Kay took the key from beneath the mat and went up to the third floor.

She was shocked to discover just how tidy Stuart had left the rooms.

The cobwebs were gone, and the refrigerator had been washed with warm water and baking soda, when she went to the window she could smell the vinegar he’d used to clean the glass. He hadn’t left a dirty dish or a ring around the old bathtub, and he certainly hadn’t left a note.

After Stuart had been gone a few days, Kay called him, just to tell him she’d decided on a trip to Jamaica, where a new hotel had been built so close to the ocean that false angel wings and blue-eyed scallops were sometimes found in the teapots. She phoned his apartment, where the message machine didn’t answer, then tried the hospital, where she was put on hold and later informed that he couldn’t be reached. She had that feeling all over again, that he was gone completely, and yet every once in a while she had the distinct sense that he was near, an impression based, she believed, on the sort of radar that comes only after having slept beside someone for nineteen years. She thought she saw him out of the corner of her eye when she was on line at the market, only to discover that the aisle where she’d imagined he’d been browsing was empty. Could that be Stuart, on the steps of the church?

Was that his shadow slipping in between the library doors as they closed? Kay grew more and more edgy, but perhaps that was only because Gregor was starting to bore hen-he was a crossword fanatic and had the ability to ignore her for hours while studying clues. “Alpha’s opposite,” he’d mutter to himself.

“Hepburn’s forte,” he’d muse. “Pride goeth before this,” he’d whisper into his beer.

After several more days of trying to contact Stuart, Kay phoned Robin, who seemed unconcerned when she heard that her brother couldn’t be reached.

“Oh, he’ll turn up,” Robin said cheerfully. “You know Stuart.” But in fact, that was the point. Kay wasn’t quite sure that she did. She began to worry in earnest: He was dead in a ditch.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.