The Glass Ocean by Beatriz Williams & Lauren Willig & Karen White

Author:Beatriz Williams & Lauren Willig & Karen White
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Fiction, 20th century, Romance, Historical, Mystery & Detective
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-09-04T05:23:45+00:00

For a moment or two, I stared at the words on the screen. My God, I hadn’t thought about Jared Holm in months, maybe years, and now—just minutes after remembering that encounter in a piss-scented Morningside Heights stairwell, his hand reaching for mine—he sends a text. An incoming communication from some strange, unsettling universe, that Twilight Zone in which a person’s image flashes across your memory, just before the phone rings and it’s him. And you can’t help thinking, you can’t help wondering—why?

My mother’s voice intruded. My mother’s brusque, pre-Alzheimer’s voice in my head: Oh, for God’s sake, Sarah. It’s just a coincidence.

I sank on the sofa and replied—Sorry, I’m in the country now, headed back to NY in a couple of days, looks like we missed each other. Hope all’s well ☺. Pressed send. Stared at the screen, at the dot dot dot of Jared replying, and then I looked back at the desk.

Why not?

A little gust of wind came through the door, fluttering the papers. I wound my way around the piles, back to the desk, and picked up the notebook. In my hand, the phone buzzed again—Jared’s reply—but I tapped the internet browser instead and entered the first set of characters in the search field: FE3C

The search results came back an instant later, but not quite in the way I expected. At the top of the results page came the dry question: Did you mean Fe3C (iron carbide)?

“Holy crap,” I whispered. “That’s it.”

* * *

I burst through the garden door, panting, calling John’s name, and crashed into Mrs. Finch. She was dressed in floral blue and an ecru apron that might once have been white, and her face wore an expression of extreme displeasure.

“I’m so sorry! Are you okay? Where’s John?”

“No, Callie. I am not okay.” She placed a withering emphasis on the last word.

“Um, it’s Sarah. Not Callie.”

She peered at me through her inch-thick spectacles. “You’re not Callie.”

“It’s Sarah!” I said. “Where’s John?”

“In the sitting room.”

I flew down the hall, past the door to the dining room, around the doorway to the sitting room. I’d never actually gone inside. John and I stuck to the kitchen and dining room. Any lounging took place in the folly. So when I whipped open the door, I wasn’t really thinking about what lay inside.

Silly me.

“John!” I said. “I figured out—”

John looked up from the corner of a cream-colored sofa next to the fireplace. On his lap curled his ex-wife, sobbing softly. Her hair spilled free to dangle in a shining, sun-streaked waterfall from the sofa’s edge. Walnut lay at his feet, next to Callie’s discarded shoes, looking anxious and miserable. He lifted his head at the same instant as John.

For an instant, our gazes met. The room faced north and the air was cool and dim, but I could still see the stricken expression on his face, the lines of worry on his forehead. He opened his mouth to say something.

Before he could speak, I turned away. Left the room and closed the door quietly behind me.

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.