Breakdown by Katherine Amt Hanna Read Free Book Online Page A

blond. She smiled a warm, understanding smile and said hello in her high, sweet voice.
    Chris nodded at her. “Good to meet you,” he said. Then, “Hello, Alan.”
    Alan Frasier had worked with Chris and Brian for many years. After the breakup, he’d formed a partnership with Brian, steering him in lucrative directions.
    “Good to see you again, Chris,” Alan said.
    “Wine?” Simon asked, trying to ease the tension without actually being jovial.
    Chris’s eyebrows went up. “Yes, please.”
    Simon moved to the sideboard. “We’ve an excellent winemaker right here in Hurleigh,” he said to Chris. “We always break out a bottle for special occasions.”
    “Come sit down, Chris,” Fiona said, putting her hand on the cushion next to her. Chris turned a bit, and Jon saw the closest thing he’d seen to a smile yet.
    “Sorry about supper,” Chris said to her as he sat down, leaving as much gap between them as he could. He still had the gift-wrapped cube in his hand. He tucked it into the space between his leg and the arm of the settee.
    “Oh, don’t worry about that,” she said. “You must be exhausted after walking nearly from Portsmouth.”
    Jon took the armchair closest to Chris as Simon came over with two glasses. He gave one to Jon.
    “So you came over on a ship?” Simon asked as he handed Chris the other wineglass. “From New York?”
    “No, from Canada, actually. Halifax. Easier, with a British passport.” Chris sipped the wine. “This is nice. Thanks.”
    “But they don’t take passengers?” Vivian asked.
    “No, I had to work my way over. And it wasn’t so easy getting on. I had to work in the shipyards for a year before I got a place.”
    “What’s it like in the States?” Alan asked him.
    Chris did the pause-to-think that Jon had already become familiar with. He sipped his wine to cover it.
    “Not so different from here, really,” he said to the room at large. “Certain areas were hit harder than others, at first, but it all degraded pretty fast. There was this overall sense of outrage that something hadn’t been done to stop the whole thing. Sometimes it seemed that to them the loss of convenience was worse than—” He stopped, blinked.
    Jon watched Chris take a breath, try to keep his face casual. A short silence in the room threatened to become awkward, then Chris went on.
    “I traveled around for some time, after—after I was alone,” he said, keeping his tone as even as possible. “I went to Baltimore, a few other places. Ended up back in New York, but it was no good there, so I set out for Canada. Didn’t make it. We got jumped on the road by a gang. They nearly killed me.”
    The women made little noises of concern; Jon found it hard to swallow the wine he’d just sampled. The “nearly killed” part was the worst, but he had caught the “we” and wondered if anyone else had. Chris went on with hardly a pause.
    “Luckily, another group came along just in time and rescued me. I ended up at a monastery, of all places, nursed back to health by the monks. They had a nice little commune going. I stayed for nearly two years.” He stopped to have some wine. The room was quiet, all of them holding back, waiting for him to go on, having decided at supper that tonight was not the time to grill him about what had obviously been a hard and painful journey. Jon got the impression that Chris had already decided what he was going to tell them. “Opportunity arose to go out with a team heading north,” Chris went on, “so I took it. We’d heard there were ships coming over. I left them and made it into Canada on my own. Eventually got on a ship.”
    “What’s it like in London?” David asked. Jon glanced at him. He was watching Chris intently. Laura elbowed him lightly, but he pretended not to notice.
    “Yeah, London,” Chris said slowly. “Well, it’s got its pluses and minuses, but mostly minuses. Half the people you run into would just as soon kill you for whatever