One True Thing by Marilyn Pappano

Author:Marilyn Pappano [Pappano, Marilyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4268-7396-6
Publisher: Silhouette
Published: 2010-08-01T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

When the lights flickered, then went dark for the third time, Cassidy shut down the computer, rose from her chair and bent to touch her toes, stretching out taut muscles and easing kinks. The sky had been gloomy when she’d awakened that morning, and the thunder had started soon after, but it had taken more than three hours for the storm to blow in full-force. The first time the power had gone off, she’d unplugged the laptop and continued to work on battery power, but enough was enough. It was time to get up, move around and get a breath of fresh air.

Wind blew the rain sideways across the lake, pounding into that side of the cabin with a relaxing tempo. Unfortunately, it also meant all the windows on that side had to be closed, so the only fresh air came from the other side of the cabin—the side where she couldn’t see her neighbor’s house and maybe, if she was lucky, her neighbor.

She settled for leaning one shoulder against the doorjamb and watching the storm from there. As the mimosa swayed and bent under the force of the wind, she briefly considered trying to pick up a weather forecast on the radio. She’d never gotten caught in a tornado before and wasn’t in the mood to try something new today. But the reception was iffy under the best of circumstances, and if they were under a tornado watch or warning, what good would it do her to know? She had no storm shelter to hide in. There wasn’t even an interior room in the house away from windows—the next best advice the weather people gave.

Lightning flashed, quick and brilliant, as thunder rattled the cabin walls. The rain poured, covering the saturated ground, running in a thousand tiny rivers to the lake’s edge. She didn’t care one way or the other about storms. As long as she wasn’t out in them, they could blow to their heart’s desire. Phil, though, had hated them. They interfered with his work, his play, his sleep, his television-watching, his reading, his computing, he’d said. Privately she’d always believed he was afraid of them. She’d seen how tense he got, had felt him flinch a thousand times at a particularly loud clap of thunder or close strike of lightning. The same pressure systems that created the storms had created a disturbance of a different sort in him, with pressure building almost to the breaking point, then easing as the system moved through.

But if that was the biggest failing a husband had, his wife was a lucky woman. She’d felt lucky…until the last three years of their marriage. Even then, even with all the changes forced on them because of him, she had still loved him. Even when she’d resented him for all he’d cost her.

All he’d cost her…. That sounded so selfish. The price he’d paid had been so much higher than hers. He’d lost all the same things she had—family, friends, hope for the future—as well as his life.

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