Sleeping Beauty by Judith Michael Read Free Book Online Page B

there. To celebrate her birthday.
    â€œWell, Anne.” Her father raised his wineglass. “Fourteen, and such a grown-up girl. Your mother would have been very proud of you.” He spoke to the whole table, looking from one face to the other, but Anne kept her eyes steadily on him. He was eleven years older than Vince, and not as flashily handsome, but he had a serious look and an upright bearing that she admired. His blond hair, never as bright as Vince’s, had turned gray seven years earlier, when her mother died; his eyes, blue-gray like his sisters’, were somber; but his eyebrows and small mustache were still blond and gave him a youthful, almost jaunty look. Anne liked it that he was dignified and strong and still young; he looked to her like a hero who could hold back hordes of enemies just by speaking sternly to them.
    He had been only thirty-five when Anne’s mother died, and everyone had expected him to marry again, but he had not. He had stayed alone in the big house that had once been filled with his family, three blocks in one direction from Marian and Fred’s house where his daughters, Anne and Gail, now lived, and two blocks the other way from the house Vince and Rita had bought when Dora was born. Anne knew from Marian that he went out frequently, dividing his evenings between two women with such mathematical precision that neither could think she was more favored than the other. And she knew that he and William played racquetball on Mondays, tennis on Thursdays, and swam on Saturdays at their club. Once he had taken her to his office, showing her the surroundings of Chatham Development Corporation and letting her read his calendar, with its neatly ruled blocks of time. Charles Chatham led a careful life, controlling everything within his power, and sometimes, when he looked at Anne with puzzled eyes, she knew with a sinking feeling that he was wondering how someone so disordered could possibly be his daughter. Maybe that was why he didn’t spend much time with her; he always seemed at a loss for words and nervous, as if he couldn’t wait to go somewhere else, where he could know exactly how to behave.
    â€œYour mother and I talked about the kind of children we wanted,” Charles said in his birthday toast, his gaze coming to rest on Anne. “Of course first we wanted you to be healthy, but then, like all parents, we hoped for everything else: brains and talent and charm. And you have those. You’re very different from your mother, but you have a spirit and drive that remind me of her, and you seem able to handle difficult situations on your own, without whining or running to others to get you out of them. That’s very grown-up and it makes me proud. Happy birthday, sweetheart, and many more.”
    â€œHear, hear,” said William. “I couldn’t say it better. You’re a good girl, Anne, and we’re all proud of you. Just don’t grow up too fast; enjoy these years of childhood whileyou’ve got them, because they’re gone before you know it and then you have to deal with the tough stuff: money and sex, that sort of thing.”
    â€œWilliam,” Nina said mildly, “I hardly think that’s appropriate for a toast on Anne’s fourteenth birthday.”
    â€œIt’s always appropriate to tell a child to stay a child.”
    Anne looked at William from beneath the tangle of black hair that came to her eyebrows. He always seemed most foolish, she thought, when he was being most kind.
    â€œMy turn,” said Ethan. He leaned forward, smiling beneath his bushy mustache. “You’re only at the beginning of the long road you’ll travel, my dear Anne, but I know you will make the journey with strength and integrity and intelligence. I hope you make it with love, as well. And I hope, for as long as I’m here, you’ll let me share it with you.”
    Anne blinked away tears. He said things she loved to