The North Building by Jefferson Flanders

Author:Jefferson Flanders [Flanders, Jefferson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-9887840-9-3
Publisher: Jefferson Flanders
Published: 2013-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Part Two

Washington, D.C.

By early March, Penny realized that she was nearing a darker place. She felt like she was slipping down a long tunnel into darkness and there seemed to be no way to climb back up and reach the light.

She craved sleep. It was the one and only time where she could hide from all of it; where she could forget her troubles and welcome the escape into nothingness. She remembered when they studied Virgil in her high school Latin class and read about the river Lethe; how those in the underworld who drank from its waters would lose their painful memories and could be reincarnated without remembering any of their past hurts. The idea appealed to her, to wipe out all of the sadness and pain, to start over again. She would be freed from her concerns, past and present.

It became her guarded secret, the way she felt, what she thought. She knew that she should tell no one. She lied to Dr. Rifkin about the dreams that she was having. She reported only a dreamless sleep, a slumber untroubled by the ghosts of her past or the torments of the present. Dr. Rifkin might have had her suspicions, but Penny kept doggedly to her story. Her therapist seemed at a loss without Penny’s dreams to interpret and Penny’s brief, factual accounts of her daily routine, coupled with her obvious lethargy, didn’t give her doctor much to work with at their sessions. The truth was that Penny had tired of the questioning, the analyzing, the talking. Would it really bring her to the core of her sadness and help her heal? Or was it a mistake to even begin therapy? Why surface all the painful things in her life? Was silence such a bad thing?

On her good days she managed to function, to read to Caleb and to help Bernice around the kitchen. If she was feeling particularly energetic she would have dinner with Matthew and listen to him talk about the political situation in Washington. Even then she tired too quickly and found herself longing to crawl under the covers and sleep.

She worried about Matthew. He couldn’t shake the cold he had been fighting since before his trip to Europe. He seemed to have lost his appetite and he stayed in his study until late at night reading files and writing.

He had returned from his trip without Dennis Collins, saying only that Dennis had gone back to New York and would let them know when he had settled on what he wanted to do about Caleb. She had masked her disappointment and had been careful not to ask too many questions about when Dennis might visit them again. Whenever she looked out of her bedroom window at the carriage house, now dark and empty, she wondered when he would reenter their lives.

She would not rest until they had negotiated a way to make Dennis part of Caleb’s future. Matthew said Dennis wanted time to think things through, but she worried that he was exacting some sort of delayed revenge by making her wait for his answer.

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.