The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule Read Free Book Online

anything but being rich. I just couldn't fit in with that world."
    "Are you in touch with her at all?" I asked.
    "Once in a while. We talk on the phone. Every time I hear her voice, it all comes back. I can't settle for anything else unless I try one more time. I'm going to apply for law school anyplace I can get in around San Francisco. I think the problem now is that we're just too far apart. If we were both in California, I think we could get back together." I asked him how long it had been since he'd gone with 30

THE STRANGER BESIDE ME
    Stephanie, and he said they'd broken up in 1968, but that Stephanie was still single.
    "Do you think she might love me again if I sent her a dozen red roses?" It was such a naive question that I looked up to see if he was serious. He was. When he talked about Stephanie in the spring of 1972, it was as if the intervening years hadn't happened at all.
    "I don't know, Ted." I ventured. "If she feels the same way you do, the roses might help-but they wouldn't make her love you if she's changed."
    "She's the one woman, the only woman I ever really loved. It's different from the way I feel about Meg. It's hard to explain. I don't know what to do."
    Seeing the glow in his eyes when he talked about Stephanie, I could envision the heartbreak ahead for Meg. I urged him not to make promises to Meg he couldn't keep.
    "At some point, you're going to have to choose. Meg loves you. She's stood by you when the going is rough, when you don't have any money. You say that Stephanie's family makes you feel poor, as if you don't fit in. It might be that Meg's real, and Stephanie's a dream. I guess the real test is-how would you feel if you didn't have Meg? What would you do if you knew she had someone else, if you found her with another man?"
    "I did once. It's funny you should bring it up, because it just made me wild. We'd had a fight, and I saw some guy's car parked outside her apartment. I raced around the alley and stood up on a garbage can to look in the window. The sweat was just pouring off me and I was like a crazy man. I couldn't stand to think of Meg with another man. I couldn't believe the effect it had on me ..."
    He shook his head, bemused by the violence of his jealousy.
    "Then maybe you care more about Meg than you realize."
    "That's the problem. One day I think I want to stay here, marry Meg, help bring Liane up, have more children-that's what Meg wants. Sometimes it seems like that's all I want But I don't have any money. I won't have any money for a long time. And I can't see myself being tied down to a life like that just when I'm getting started. And then I think about Stephanie, and the life I could have with her. I want

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    that too. I've never been rich, and I want to be. But how can I say
    'thanks a lot and goodbye' to Meg?"
    The phones rang then, and we left the problem in midair. Ted's turmoil didn't seem that bizarre or desperate for a man of twenty-four; in fact, it seemed quite normal. He had some maturing to do. When he did, I thought he would probably make the right decision.
    When I arrived for work a few Tuesdays later, Ted told me he had applied for admittance to law school at Stanford and at the University of California at Berkeley.
    Ted seemed to be a prime candidate for law school; he had the incisive mind for it, the tenacity, and he believed totally in the orderly progression of changes in the system of government through legislation. His stance made him something of a loner among the work-study students working at the Crisis Clinic. They were semihippies, both in their garb and their political views, and he was a conservative Republican. I could see that they considered him a rather odd duck as they argued about the riots that were constantly erupting on the University campus.
    "You're wrong, man," a bearded student told him. "You aren't going to change Vietnam by sucking up to the old fogies in Congress. All they care about is another big