Once in a Blue Moon by Eileen Goudge Read Free Book Online

iridescent. Lindsay reached for her wineglass, the light from the setting sun sparkling off its rim as she lifted it to her lips.
    It wasn’t just the article. These past few days, thoughts of her sister had been cropping up more than usual, as if a radio frequency on which Lindsay normally received only static were suddenly transmitting a clear, if intermittent, signal. Why now, after all these years? She had no answer.
    Grant finally abandoned the sports section when the light became too dim for him to read. “One of these days, I’d like a boat of my own,” he remarked, gazing out over the marina. “Nothing fancy, just a nice little sloop. Enough room below deck for the two of us.” He looped an arm around her shoulders.
    “You could afford one now,” she told him.
    “Oh, so you think I’m made of money, do you?” He turned to her, his mouth slanted in a smile that, with the freckles spattered over his nose, made him look like a mischievous schoolboy. “Saving the environment has its compensations, I’ll admit, but I’m afraid a fat salary isn’t one of them.”
    “I was talking about my sister, and you’re talking boats. Do you think there’s a connection there?” Her lighthearted tone contained a gentle reprimand. Grant was the ideal boyfriend in many ways. He made few demands and loved her just as she was, so much so that he preferred the present, unvarnished Lindsay—jeans and sweatshirt, no makeup, her straight brown hair pulled back in a ponytail—to the stylishly dressed and made-up one who would stroll into the restaurant on his arm an hour from now. So why did she sometimes get the feeling that her concerns were fourth or fifth on his priority list? Was it simply that they’d been together so long that he no longer hung on her every word?
    “We could always name the boat after your sister,” he offered.
    She frowned. “Be serious.”
    “I am. What better tribute?”
    “She’s not dead.” Lindsay added on a fretful note, “At least, I hope not.”
    Grant reached for the wine bottle and refilled their glasses. Her mind traveled back to when they’d first met, three years ago at an Earth First! fund-raiser at which he’d been the keynote speaker. She recalled how captivated she’d been by the sight of him standing at the podium. He wasn’t, in the strictest sense, what she’d call handsome—more Sam Shepard than George Clooney—but he was so tall and poised and confident that he’d gleamed up there like a brandished sword, with his shock of blond hair and impossibly white teeth. Displaying just enough boyish enthusiasm to soften his heroic contours, he spoke urgently of the need for each individual to take measures in combating pollution: a modern-day Jason out to slay the Gorgons of corporate greed.
    “I hope I didn’t bore you with my speech,” he said to her later on, after they were introduced. “Nothing sets the cause back like a preacher on his soap box.” She assured him that she’d found his speech interesting, if a bit too long, to which he replied with a laugh, “You’re the first honest person I’ve spoken to tonight. Lindsay, is it? Lindsay, will you sit and have a drink with me? I promise, no more preaching. I want to hear all about you .”
    On that night she had the feeling that if another woman at the function stripped off all her clothes and went streaking through the crowd, Grant wouldn’t even have noticed, he was so focused on her. In the days and weeks that followed, too, he listened with rapt attention to her stories, laughed at her jokes, made a point of reading books she recommended; he even pretended to enjoy himself when dragged along to the local farmers’ market, which he only later confessed he found about as fun as flossing his teeth (having grown up on a farm, he didn’t see the appeal).
    Now she wondered how she’d managed to drift away from the center of that focus. Was it simply inevitable when a couple had been together as long as