Life Penalty

Life Penalty by Joy Fielding Read Free Book Online Page B

Book: Life Penalty by Joy Fielding Read Free Book Online
Authors: Joy Fielding
Tags: ROMANCE - - SUSPENSE
homework by bursting into song. Carol, on the other hand, reveled in the family theatrics, won the lead roles in all the school musicals, and went on to become a professional actress, struggling for the past decade to make a name for herself on Broadway.
    It wasn’t until Gail was almost out of grade school that she realized her father was not the opera singer she had always assumed he was (and had listed as such on all school forms under father’s occupation) but was, in fact, a wholesale furrier. This news came as something of a shock to her, and for a while caused her to think twice before answering any questions at all, even on subjects of which she was very sure. A naturally intense, somewhat anxious child, Gail became increasingly shy as she grew older, possibly a reaction to all the extroverts at home, but more likely because it was simply in her nature to be quiet.
    Carol was her opposite. Outgoing where Gail was introspective, mischievous where Gail was cautious, argumentative where Gail was diffident, Carol was like a little tank that rolled over anything and anybody who stood in her path. She did it in the sweetest of ways, however, and nobody seemed to mind, especially Gail, who admired and adored her younger sister. The admiration was mutual, and despite the fact that Carol was almost four years younger, it was Carol who was protective of Gail, and not the other way around. Carol watched out for her and made sure that Gail was not lost amid all the hoopla and noise generated by the rest of the family.
    Aside from singing, Dave Harrington was a prolific painter and part-time mad inventor. The recreation room of their home was covered with his exotic, expressionistic works of art. Gail was too embarrassed to bring any of her friends down to this room lest they be frightened away bythe barrage of green and purple faces that would greet them. On one occasion, when Gail had been asked to take the furnace man downstairs to check the oil, he had stumbled across a large bright pink and orange painting of a nude woman, standing with her back to the viewer, her ample buttocks overhanging a large bucket of water in which rested her right foot. The furnace man had looked from the bright pink body of the nude woman to the brighter pink face of the teenager beside him, and asked with a leer, “Is that you?” Later, Gail’s mother confessed that she had posed for the painting. She had also posed, she confided, for another nude which depicted a red-haired woman (Gail’s mother was a strawberry blonde), her pendulous bosom fully exposed, reclining against a bright green background, a small purple dog positioned discreetly in the area of her hips, one of its large floppy ears pointing toward the sky.
    The paintings, however, paled in comparison to Dave Harrington’s inventions. Among his many ideas were a chastity belt for dogs, umbrellas that could somehow attach themselves to hats, leaving one’s hands free for parcels, and sunglasses with built-in eyelashes. He swore everyone in the house to secrecy with regard to his inventions, but Gail would have rather died than divulge any of these secrets to her friends, who all seemed to have perfectly normal fathers.
    It wasn’t until Gail was divorced from Mark Gallagher and forced to leave her own small daughter, Jennifer, with her parents to go off to work as a teller in a nearby bank, that she realized how truly special her mother and father were. By that time, of course, that phase of her life was over. It had begun with a simple introduction.
    “I’m Mark Gallagher,” he had announced confidently, a man who obviously knew who he was, and Gail hadlooked up from the book she had been studying to see the handsome, if somewhat morose-looking student of art at Boston University, studying her just as intently.
    “I know,” she said shyly, her instincts telling her to get up and run, her curiosity dictating that she stay.
    “You know?” He sat down on the bench beside

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