The Radcliffe Ladies' Reading Club by Julia Bryan Thomas

Author:Julia Bryan Thomas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks

15

For the first time, Alice wasn’t looking forward to book club. It wouldn’t be a simple discussion of books as usual. She was worried about Caroline, wondering if the girl would turn up or if she had even returned to Radcliffe for the second semester. Alice hadn’t heard from her since before Christmas. As sophisticated as she was, Caroline was still at an impressionable age. To have her trust in humanity completely stripped from her in one horrible night was too much to bear. Somehow, Cambridge had felt safer to Alice than Chicago, perhaps because of the comfortable life she had created for herself here. In reality, there was cruelty and suffering everywhere. One must always be on one’s guard to avoid being hurt.

She’d gathered that Caroline’s home life wasn’t all that it should have been either. Nothing in particular was said between them that night, but it was clear she couldn’t confide in her parents. That in itself was a shame, one Alice knew well. A lack of understanding in her own family had forced her to become more self-sufficient, but that wasn’t always the case. Tragedies could make or break a woman, and it was impossible for anyone to know how she might respond until she went through it herself.

Alice had been lucky, she supposed. Jack had never struck her. Yet there had always been the knowledge that he was her superior in the relationship. It was a construct that she could not endure. He was controlling, never allowing her any freedom. His suspicious nature had resulted in endless interrogations and accusations. If she’d been late for an appointment, he was upset. If the trip to the market cost five dollars more than he’d supposed, he would tell her to return an item. The constant conflicts had worn her down, and she felt little for him by the time she asked for a divorce. She wasn’t his property, although neither her parents nor her sister understood her view. In any case, she’d drawn a boundary and she would live with the consequences.

It was a difficult thing to draw boundaries with others. Less so with Jack than it had been with her family, who had taken his side, expecting all marriages to last forever. But what was done was done. And to Alice, it was all for the best. Sighing, she decided to put it out of her mind. There were better things to think about.

Just that week, she had acquired a new friend. A woman had come into the bookshop one snowy morning, apologizing as she tracked in slush on the bottom of her boots.

“Please don’t worry about it,” Alice assured her.

The woman hastily pulled off her boots, standing there in her stocking feet.

“I’ll be happy to clear this up if you have a mop,” she said, setting her handbag on Alice’s desk.

“Nonsense,” Alice replied. “It will take two seconds. Go ahead and look around.”

It took hardly a minute to mop away the melting snow, and then Alice went back to her desk to continue working on her catalog.

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.