A Sense of Shadow (v1.0) by Unknown Author

Author:Unknown Author
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-03-10T00:00:00+00:00

“This is my mother, Sally,” Janet said later in the library, handing him a photograph. The woman was beautiful, with black hair that hung down over both shoulders in soft waves; her eyes were dark blue with heavy lashes. She had a model’s face, lovely proportions. Janet handed him another one of her mother, this time riding a horse. Slim, vibrant looking, laughing, she was even prettier than in the first photograph.

“Here’s Conrad’s and Mallory’s mother, Winona.” She too had dark hair, but she was not as beautiful as Janet’s mother. Winona was tall and long-legged, wide-shouldered.

“She was pregnant and the baby wasn’t his,” Janet said matter-of-factly. “That’s why they fought. My grandmother told me.”

“How did she know?”

“Arithmetic. Winona was three months pregnant and he had been in Washington for six months, working for the rationing board after Pearl Harbor.”

She was flipping pages of the album, looking at the loose pictures, and now she handed him another one. “Viola,” she said, “Lucas’s mother.”

His stomach spasmed like an attack of appendicitis. It hadn’t been Laura that he had glimpsed in the water. It had been her. Viola. Long brown hair, like Laura’s, but there the resemblance ended. Laura was handsome all the time, sometimes she was pretty, and there had been times when he had known she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. But Viola had started beautiful and could never have been not beautiful. Well-spaced brown eyes, soft brown hair, straight nose, wide, full mouth. She was what people meant when they talked about classic beauty.

“What’s wrong?” Janet asked, shaking his arm. “You look like you’ve been sandbagged.”

“Nothing. It’s nothing.”

She took the photograph from his fingers and replaced it in the album. “Nothing. Right Whatever you say.”

“I’m going out for some air. Thanks, Janet. Thanks.”

“Sure,” she said dryly. “And remember it’s all coincidence, Professor. There is no mechanism for anything else.”

He felt sandbagged, he thought, standing by the outside door, taking in deep breaths. Around the side of the house Mallory and Carlos were cleaning up the mess in the rose garden. Carlos had already dug up the dahlias. Today the air was almost cold; there was a brisk northeast wind coming down from the mountains, frost weather. He stared dully at the fields across the road; it never had occurred to him before to wonder if there would be frost or not, if the weather would change. There had been no reason for him to care. He started to walk.

Today Conrad had taken Lucas and Regina out for a ride, just to get them out of the house. Regina was convinced that there were those mysterious pockets where crazy things happened to you. And Janet was still going through the books on possession, searching for something, symptoms maybe, signs to watch for to indicate it was happening. Hugh felt a helpless fury inside himself, like a dull hot pain growing in his gut That bastard, he muttered, that goddam bastard…

He walked to the river and found a flat rock to sit on.

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