Coming Home by Laurie Breton Read Free Book Online Page A

honeymoon at the Sleepytime Old Age Home.”
    He took her hand in his and somberly studied her slender fingers. 
“There’s something you have to know,” he said.  “Up front.  I want to make sure
you understand what you’re getting into.”
    She closed her fingers around his.  “Yes?” she said.
    He cleared his throat.  “The kind of life I lead,” he said, “is
not conducive to rearing children.”
    Her steady gaze didn’t waver, nor did her grip loosen.  But he
could hear it in her voice, the faint hint of a tremor.  “Ever?” she said.
    He felt himself weakening.  God help him if she ever figured out
that he was incapable of saying no to her.  “It’s not an easy life,” he said. 
“I’d have to be damn settled before I’d ever consider bringing a kid into it.”
    “But later,” she said, “someday—”
    He brought her hand to his mouth, kissed those pale, trembling
fingers.  “Someday,” he said, “when things are more settled, we’ll talk about
it again.”
    Her eyes never left his as she removed the diamond engagement ring
from the third finger of her left hand and placed it on the table beside the
bed.  “Are you sure?” he said hoarsely.
    She smiled.  “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”
     
    ***
     
    At 4:47 on a Tuesday afternoon, in the clerk’s office at the city
hall in Hayesville, Maryland, while static crackled from the police radio in
the lobby and pigeons cooed from their roost along the eaves above the open
window, Danny held her trembling hand in his and promised to cherish her until
death.  With the mayor’s secretary and an off-duty cop as witnesses, they
exchanged the rings they’d bought a half-hour earlier at K-mart, and the city
clerk, doubling as a notary public, pronounced them man and wife.
    She signed the marriage certificate with a flourish.  Casey
Lynn Bradley Fiore.   Danny’s handwriting was small and neat as he signed
his name next to hers.  The secretary returned to her typewriter and the cop
went home to dinner, and Danny slipped the clerk a twenty before taking Casey’s
arm and walking her out into late afternoon sunshine.  There, on the sidewalk
in front of God and half the homebound population of Hayesville, he swept her
into his arms and kissed her until her insides turned to butter.  The secretary
came out the door and gave them a benevolent smile, and Casey returned the
smile just from the sheer joy of it.
    Danny cupped her face in his hands and kissed her again.  “So,
Mrs. Fiore,” he said, “where would you like to eat dinner?”
    She straightened his collar.  She couldn’t seem to keep herself
from touching him.  “Some place wonderfully elegant, Mr. Fiore.  Like the
Ritz.”
    “I’m afraid you’ll have to settle for something a little less
elegant,” he said wryly.  “Like McDonald’s.”
    She kissed his chin.  “I can’t think of a more elegant place.”
    They spent their wedding night in a motel off the Jersey Pike,
somewhere outside of Philly.  In a paneled room that smelled of mildew, they
drank supermarket champagne from disposable plastic goblets and explored together
the mysteries of love.  He shared with her his fire, she shared with him her
tenderness, and they drew strength from the knowledge that nobody could tear
them apart now.
    And in the morning, they went home to face the lions.
     

chapter five
     
    When the knock came on her apartment door, Casey had one foot on
the kitchen counter, the other braced on the back of a straight chair that
she’d weighted down with books, and she was attempting to unscrew an
uncooperative light fixture.  Catching hold of the glass shade to balance
herself, she shouted,  “Come in.  The door’s open.”
    “Casey?”
    “Rob?  I’m in the kitchen.”
    “How many times do I have to tell you to keep the door locked? 
This is Boston, not the sticks.  And don’t ever say ‘come in’ until you know
who’s on the other—”  He