Sins of Innocence by Jean Stone Read Free Book Online Page A

happened?” Susan asked, trying hard to be interested.
    “He won.”
    “Oh, Bert. I’m sorry.”
    Bert shrugged. “It was probably because of my beard,” he half joked. “You know these conservative New Englanders.”
    Susan tugged the short-cropped graying curls around his chin. “I think it’s a lovely beard,” she said.
    He motioned for Susan to sit down. She automatically shoved aside stacks of papers that were scattered acrossthe overstuffed couch. To her, Bert’s messy apartment always had a welcoming feel.
    “Wine?” he asked.
    “Please. Make it a large glass.”
    “The bitch of the whole thing,” Bert called back to her from his galley kitchen, “is that now Gardiner’s my boss. Ice?”
    “Sure. And bring a joint with you.”
    “Don’t have much left.”
    She heard the tinkle of ice.
    “Don’t need much. Bring it anyway.” Leftover hippie, Lawrence liked to call her. So what? she thought. So what if she and Bert shared an occasional joint? Until she’d met Bert, it had been several years since Susan had smoked pot. After she’d left Lawrence, she suddenly had no need for the chemical mellowness, but before that, she had smoked with gusto. Pot and cigarettes. She’d started in college, with David. In many ways, she thought now, her life had started, and ended, with David.
    Bert returned to the living room, handed her a glass, and tossed a thin joint onto the end table. She looked at it. The paper was wrinkled, the ends twisted tight. Exactly the way David had rolled them. She took a long drink of her wine and picked up the joint. Bert leaned over and lit it, then settled onto the floor in front of her.
    “So what’s up? I didn’t expect to see you tonight. How’d things go at Joe and Freida’s?”
    Susan took a deep drag and laughed, smoke spewing from her lungs. Bert had a way of making her laugh. “Will you stop calling my father ‘Joe’? That sounds so weird. No one ever calls him ‘Joe.’ It’s Joseph.”
    “Whatever. How bad was it?”
    Susan took another drag. Her mouth shriveled with dryness. Her head spun. “It was … tolerable. About what I expected.” She listened to the hollow sound of her voice as she held in the sweet smoke, letting the calmness begin to creep in.
    “So?”
    “So what?” She exhaled.
    “So you must have trucked over here tonight for a reason. I’d like to think it was because of your passion to see me, but somehow I think it must be something else.” He smiled again, that warm, generous smile.
    “Well, I did miss you,” Susan lied. Or was it a lie? She honestly didn’t know.
    Bert took a sip of his drink. “Yeah, yeah. But what else. What’s bothering you?”
    “Is that what you think?” Susan asked. Her head spun again, and she could have sworn she felt her heart skip a beat. She handed Bert the joint. She’d had enough. “You think I only want to see you to talk about my problems?”
    “There could be worse reasons.”
    Susan leaned back and toyed with her glass. It was a thick water glass, the kind the local bank had offered for ninety-nine cents with a twenty-five-dollar deposit, hardly the Waterford she’d been drinking out of last night at her parents’. But it felt more real to her, more honest.
    “Okay, you win. There is something. When I got home tonight, there was a message on my answering machine that was pretty upsetting.”
    “Don’t tell me. Gardiner called. Now he wants you to go out with him. He’s trying to get at me from every angle.”
    Susan laughed. “Gardiner’s married.”
    “That wouldn’t stop a man like him.”
    “No, I suppose not. But, no”—she shook her head—“it wasn’t Gardiner.”
    Bert was quiet, waiting for her to continue.
    She reached over and plucked the joint from his fingers. One more hit, she thought. One more hit will make this easier. “It was an old friend. Not a friend really. Just someone I knew a long time ago.”
    “Old flame?”
    “No. A woman.” She was aware of