Love Stories in This Town by Amanda Eyre Ward Read Free Book Online

photo until I found another of Renee. In this picture, she was standing next to Uncle Gerry, who had attended our wedding, and given us a salad bowl.
    Gerry's hair was white now, but in the picture, it was reddish brown. He looked about nineteen. He and Aunt Renee were sitting side by side, wearing bathing suits. Renee held her hair back from her face; she squinted against a summer sun.
    At our wedding, Uncle Gerry took me for a spin around the dance floor. He was still handsome, like Bill's dad, but the word was that he lived all alone somewhere in Canada. “You have everything in front of you,” he said. His eyes were kind. “I'm jealous,” he said.
    “Can I call you Uncle Gerry?” I had asked.
    He looked more bewildered than touched, but then the band began to play Van Morrison's “Into the Mystic.” Bill came from behind and took me in his arms.
    I brought the photo of Renee and Gerry outside. “Look at them,” I said.
    Bill sighed.
    “They were happy, too,” I said.
    The sun's final rays shot across the lake, and the green boat came into view. I watched my husband as the girl and her father moved past. They waved, and Bill waved back. I knew that soon, I would no longer be the love of his life.
    TWO
    There were tears and lists and bottles of frozen, yellow milk, but finally Bill was alone with his wife. She sat in the passenger seat of the rental car clutching her breast pump. “I just wish the cabin had a phone,” said Lizzy.
    Bill pulled out of his parents' driveway. “The baby,” he said, “is fine.” He felt as if he had been repeating these four words incessantly since Aurora's birth.
    “I know,” said Lizzy. “But do you think the cell will work?”
    “My parents know where to find us,” said Bill. “Can you try to relax?”
    “To be honest,” said Lizzy, “I don't want to go. I'm sorry, Bill, but I just don't. There—I said it.”
    Bill pressed on the accelerator. It was early fall, the trees still holding their auburn leaves. If Lizzy just stopped talking, they'd be at the cabin in an hour.
    “Bill? Seriously. Let's just go another time.”
    “How about a donut?” said Bill, pointing to Kaye's Donuts, on the side of the road.
    “A donut?” said Lizzy. She rubbed her eye with the heel of her hand. She was tired, of course, but so was he. At eighteen months old, Aurora still slept with Lizzy, waking a few times a night.
    “Yes,” he said. “A donut.”
    She gazed out the window. “Well,” she said quietly, “okay.”
    “Just skip it,” said Bill. “Just forget it.”
    “No, I want one,” said Lizzy. “I want a donut, Bill. Maybe raspberry jelly?”
    “It's too late,” said Bill. He drove on.
    It all began with a broken leg. Lizzy had returned to the company six weeks after Aurora's birth, and Bill loved pushing the baby to day care in the expensive stroller her parents had sent from Bennington. His job was a chore, but it paid the bills (as the Boston Ballet didn't) and he could often sneak out early to pick up his daughter.
    Aurora was nine months old when she fell off a climbing gym at the park. Her scream was horrible, and her leg was broken in two places. Lizzy was dancing Odette in a Swan Lake matinee, and could not be reached. What the hell were you doing? she wanted to know, later that night, after she had given Aurora a sponge bath. Well, he had been reading Portland Magazine on a bench, sipping a latte. Bill agreed with his wife: it was his fault.
    Aurora began protesting when Lizzy dropped her at Happy Baby Day Care, holding on to Lizzy and wailing. “I want to be with her,” said Lizzy, calling Bill's cell phone, “and she wants to be with me.” The last “me” was infused with a desperate, high-pitched tone.
    They decided Bill would do the drop-off and the pickup. Lizzy would do the evening bath, the singing, the snuggling, the nighttime feeding. She would settle Aurora between them in bed and then say, “Bill, no. Not in front of the baby.” She