Community by Graham Masterton Read Free Book Online

clinic’s main entrance catch the light, and Sue stepped out, wearing her red beret and her red-and-orange coat.
    She hesitated for a moment at the top of the steps and then she started to cross the forecourt toward the parking lot. As she did so, another woman appeared from around the side of the clinic and started to walk toward her. This woman was wearing a long black coat and a knitted black Peruvian beanie with strings hanging down. Although Michael couldn’t hear her, she obviously called out to Sue because she raised her arm and at the same time Sue stopped and turned around and waited for her to catch up with her.
    The two women embraced and kissed as if they were old friends, and immediately started talking to each other, with the snow falling on their hats and their shoulders. Michael couldn’t see clearly at first who the other woman was, but then both of them laughed at something, and stepped back a little as they did so, and he recognized her as Isobel Weston, the woman with whom he was going to be staying.
    He stood watching them, frowning. According to Doctor Connor, Sue had been up here to see him only twice since his accident, and it seemed extraordinary that she had made such a good friend of Isobel in only two visits. Still, she had probably stayed overnight on each occasion, which could have given the women the opportunity to get to know each other quite well.
    After they had talked for three or four minutes, they kissed and embraced again, and Sue continued on her way to the parking lot, while Isobel walked around the side of the south-east wing and out of sight.
    Sue appeared out of the parking lot a few seconds later, driving a silver Lexus SUV. She looked left and right, and then drove out of the clinic and turned right, away from Trinity and towards the interstate.
    That night, Michael suddenly opened his eyes and sat bolt upright in bed.
    It was 3:23 am, according to the digital clock on his nightstand, but his room wasn’t totally dark because the lights were always left on in the corridor outside. He could hear the night orderlies talking and the squeaking of trolley wheels.
    Look at that snow!
That’s what his mother had said.
Oh, shoot, George!
Look at that
snow!
    But wasn’t his mother supposed to be living in a rest home in Oakland, close to his sister? And although it occasionally snowed on the high ground around San Francisco, it
never
snowed in the Bay area … or hardly ever.
    So if his mother had looked out of her window and seen that it was snowing … where the hell was she?

FIVE
    T he next morning he had an early breakfast with Sue in the clinic’s commissary. They sat at a green Formica-topped table next to the window, looking out over the snow-covered rose garden. The reflected light from the snow made them both look unnaturally pale.
    Sue had tied her hair back with a red silk scarf with patterns of golden stirrups on it, and was wearing a red roll-neck sweater and black jeans. Michael thought she looked like the owner of a riding stable for tourists who didn’t know one end of a horse from the other; and there was no doubt that she did have that air of bossiness about her.
    â€˜When are you setting off back to Oakland?’ he asked her. ‘The forecast said it’s going to start snowing again later this afternoon.’
    â€˜Oh, I shall go as soon as I’ve finished this,’ she said. ‘In any case, I doubt if it’ll be snowing at all, south of Redding.’ She was cutting up waffles with the edge of her fork. Michael had ordered only a cup of black coffee. He usually liked waffles, too, or pancakes, but this morning he didn’t feel at all hungry.
    â€˜Will you be seeing Mom when you get back?’
    â€˜Oh, not until tomorrow, probably.’
    â€˜You
will
give her my love, though, won’t you?’
    Sue, with her mouth full, looked at him narrowly.
    â€˜Is something bothering you?’ she asked