Drive and Determination by Kara Louise Read Free Book Online

lived, but it was not enough to consistently pay the bills. So her job at the library was one way to solve that problem. There she had a job she loved and they were willing to let her take time off when her own business demanded her time.
            Looking around her, she was proud of her living room. It was this room that she had put the most time and money into designing and redecorating. She figured that this was the room most people would see when they came to visit her, and hopefully, would recognize the talent she had in the area of design. Her eye for placement demanded that every item on a table or shelf and every picture or knick knack hung on the wall had its perfect place.
            She knew all about how the eye must be drawn to one object, how you must decide what you want that focus to be. She knew how to make things look balanced, even when they were not. She knew how to hang odd shaped and sized pictures without them looking as if they were just stuck on the wall. Unfortunately, there was not a lot of demand for her work and she was just not willing to move to a big city; at least not if she didn’t have to.
            She stepped outside onto the large porch and walked over to the porch swing that was hung out there. When she found this house and its porch swing, she knew this was the place for her.
            She had fond memories of visiting her Aunt and Uncle Garner in the Midwest and how in the evenings when the weather was mild, they would sit together on their porch swing. They would talk to each other about their day, her aunt working on some needlework or crocheting and her uncle smoking his pipe and reading the newspaper. But the one thing Elyssa noticed was that they talked and listened to each other. Elyssa came to believe that the happiness in their marriage was due in large part to that porch swing.
            She picked up a pillow and sat down upon the swing, plopping the pillow down onto her lap. She brought her legs up and the movement caused the swing to sway as she wrapped her arms around her legs. She leaned her head forward against the pillow and felt her grief begin to spill out again. The creaking from the swing’s long chains seemed to echo her anguish with mournful cries.
            While Janet was in Guatemala, when either of the sisters needed a word of encouragement, they would be on the phone with one another and Elyssa would always be rocking soothingly with her cordless phone in hand. When Janet visited Elyssa the previous year on a trip home, the two sisters spent hours catching up with each other on this very swing.
            She loved it here. She loved the slow pace and the appreciation everyone had for the beauty that surrounded them. She thought of her father down in Los Angeles and how he traveled an hour both ways to get to work and then spent over ten hours a day there. He would come home tired and irritable, with little time for anyone. He virtually had no free time to enjoy his own pursuits. While Elyssa and he once had a very special relationship, towards the end she saw what his job had done to him, but it was too late for a change.
            When he had a heart attack at the young age of 54, she could only blame it on the high pressure tactics of his boss and swore that she would never marry a man who was so consumed by his career. For some odd reason, she thought of William Denton.
            Here was a man who most likely worked 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and demanded the same from his employees. He was a man who most likely would not be able to take the time at the end of his day and enjoy the serenity of a porch swing in the presence of a wife and family.
            An angry tremor passed through her as she placed him in the same sphere as her father’s boss. Both men were responsible for the deaths of people she had loved dearly.