SUMMER of FEAR by T. Jefferson Parker Read Free Book Online Page A

there on the deck with my head in Isabella's lap, I was
proud of her, and of myself for having had the good sense to marry her.
    "When you go downtown at night, do you look at other g-girls?"
    "No. I think about you."
    "Then why do you go?"
    "I need to be away sometimes."
    "That hurts me more than anything else. That you need to get away
from me. Remember how it used to be when we were always together?"
    "It can be that way again. We'll have that
again."
    "But you need to get away from me and I understand. I know you have
to dress me in the morning when you wish you were writing, and you do all the
shopping and errands, and you clean up after me. And you do the c-cooking at
night and the dishes. And you don't have a social life anymore because I don't
want people to see what a pig you have for a wife. And I know I don't like our
friends to come over. And I know you wanted babies, Russ—because I wanted them
even more than you did. And I know now when you Iook into the future, all you
can see is me getting w-worse. I can’t stand the look on your face sometimes.
It's so full of regret and hate. It scares me."
    I drank more. "It's not you I hate, Iz. It's the sickness. It’s not
our life I regret. It's all the things we wanted to do."
    "I wish I could change it. I've tried so better to get hard. I
mean—"
    "I know. You're doing everything you can,
baby."
    Her speech was deteriorating more rapidly. She stroked my hair for a
long while. The fireworks burst open in colors, lobbed fading comets down
toward the hills. Fresh ones wobbled upward through the darkness, leaving
smoke trails. Coyotes yipped from some unspecified distance, their cries
bouncing madly around the night. I looked out to the hillsides and followed the
outline of Our Lady of the Canyon—one of Isabella's favorite formations. At
night, two hills running one behind the other became a pregnant woman lying
supine against the sky; the sandstone became her hair, the oak stands became
her breasts, and the lights of the city spraying up from between her legs
became a soft glow in the place her genitals would be. Isabella had named her.
You couldn't even see her during the day. Isabella had even named the sound the
wind made—or was it the cry of some misplaced animal?—a keening moan that
issued from deep in the canyon on some nights. She called him the Man of the
Dark.
    "Our Lady of the Canyon looks nice tonight," I said. Her
sobbing stopped. She drew a deep breath and I felt it shudder back out of her
chest. "She's watching the show, too."
    It is hard to describe what I felt then, kneeling beside Isabella's
chair. Have you ever known helplessness while someone you love is suffering?
Have you ever cursed God for what He has done? Have you ever felt your heart
throbbing with so much love and rage that they get mixed up and you can't tell
one from the other?
    Well, let me tell you this: No matter how deep my own despair was, I
knew it was nothing compared to hers; knew that I could only follow her so far
out on that gangplank she was being forced to walk over deep black water.
Isabella was the one it was happening to. Isabella was having this nightmare.
Isabella—no matter how I felt or what I said—was in this alone. And she knew
it.
    "I'm done
with my little outburst," she said finally. "What for
d-dessert?"
    By nine, I had
done the dishes, gotten Isabella undressed and into bed, and almost finished
the wine. My heart was beginning to beat faster. I could feel the motion coming
on. I imagined breeze blowing against my face, objects racing past. I was a
unfettered spirit, rushing with the wind down Laguna Canyon. I was a thing
without conscience. I was free.
    I kissed Isabella good night.
    "Don't stay out too late," she said. "Don't smile at an
big-titted blondes."
    "No. I'll be good."
     

CHAPTER
SIX
    I drove back down
to South Laguna and parked a hundred feet short of Amber's solitary mansion. It
looked just as it had the night before, the one faint light