Hold Tight by Harlan Coben

Author:Harlan Coben [Coben, Harlan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3, pdf
Tags: Suspense, Fiction, Thrillers
ISBN: 9780451236791
Google: OKzlHROplcUC
Amazon: 045122650X
Barnesnoble: 045122650X
Publisher: Signet
Published: 2008-04-15T05:00:00+00:00

ILENE Goldfarb woke up early in the morning and flicked on the coffee maker. She slipped into her robe and slippers and padded down her driveway to grab the paper. Her husband, Herschel, was still in bed. Her son, Hal, had been out late last night, as befits a teenager in his last year of high school. Hal had already been accepted at Princeton, her alma mater. He had worked hard to get there. Now he blew off steam, and she was fine with that.

The morning sun warmed the kitchen. Ilene sat in her favorite chair and curled her legs under her. She pushed away the medical journals. There were a lot of them. Not only was she a renowned transplant surgeon but her husband was considered the top cardiac man in northern New Jersey, practicing out of Valley Hospital in Ridgewood.

Ilene sipped the coffee. She read the paper. She thought about the simple pleasures of life and how rarely she indulged them. She thought about Herschel, upstairs, how handsome he was when they met in medical school, how they had survived the insane hours and rigors of medical school, of internship, of residency, of surgical fellowships, of work. She thought about her feelings for him, how they had mellowed over the years into something she found comforting, how Herschel had recently sat her down and suggested a “trial separation” now that Hal was about to leave the nest.

“What’s left?” Herschel had asked her, spreading his hands. “When you really think about us as a couple, what’s left, Ilene?”

Sitting alone in the kitchen, scant feet from where her husband of twenty-four years had asked that question, she could still hear his words echo.

Ilene had pushed herself and worked so hard, gone for it all, and she had gotten it: the incredible career, the wonderful family, the big house, respect of peers and friends. Now her husband wondered what was left. What indeed. The mellow had been such a slow slide, so gradual, that she had never really seen it. Or cared to see it. Or wanted more. Who the hell knew?

She looked toward the stairs. She was tempted to go back up right this very moment and crawl into bed with Herschel and make love to him for hours, like they used to too many years ago, boink those “what’s left” doubts right out of his head. But she couldn’t make herself get up. She just couldn’t. So she read the paper and sipped her coffee and wiped her eyes.

“Hey, Mom.”

Hal opened the refrigerator and drank straight from the container of orange juice. There was a time she’d correct him on this—she’d tried for years—but really, Hal was the only one who drank orange juice and too many hours get wasted on stuff like that. He was going off to college now. Their time together was running out. Why fill it with nonsense like that?

“Hey, sweetheart. Out late?”

He drank some more, shrugged. He wore shorts and a gray T-shirt. There was a basketball cropped under his arm.

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