A Different Light Read Online Free PDF Page A

the windows as if gushing from a giant hose.
    She lay awake listening to Callie’s breathing until she was certain her daughter was on her way toward peaceful slumber, then eased her legs over the side of the bed. The soles of her feet slid over warm fur. The dog’s huge head snapped up quickly to identify the human whose foot dangled just slightly over her neck.
    “Go back to sleep, Hannah.” Athen leaned over to pat the dog’s yellow rump, then walked quietly toward the doorway. Under one foot, a soft rubber object squeaked.Hannah’s favorite toy, a small orange hedgehog, lay right inside the door, close by, as always, to Hannah.
    Quietly, Athen crossed the hall to Callie’s room and closed the windows, proceeding next to the back bedroom. Hesitating only briefly, she turned on the light, averting her eyes from the sudden brightness. She stood in the doorway, surveying the remnants of the only home-improvement project John had ever failed to complete.
    The wallpaper table still bisected the room, a sheet of paper cut, but not hung, held flat by a level at one end and a book at the other. The earbuds still dangled from the iPod he’d left on the ladder shelf. He’d finished two walls the day before he died, and had tried to finish a third on what was to be his last morning. Unaware of his fate, he’d risen early and proceeded to work on the new guest room in preparation for a visit from his sister, Meg, the following week. He’d worked steadily through the morning, eager to finish that one wall before he’d have to stop, change into his uniform, and report for the four-to-midnight shift.
    Athen had not been there when he left for work that afternoon, having had a number of errands to complete before picking up Callie at the school bus and taking her to the library. She’d run through the afternoon’s itinerary a thousand times in her mind since that day. Which of her tasks might she have omitted that would have brought her home in time to say good-bye? The supermarket, where she’d stood in line for ten minutes, her cart filled with who could remember what? The drugstore, where she’d leisurely thumbed through magazines before making a selection from the paperback novels that lined the shelves of one aisle? Had she picked up Callie at three at school instead of at the bus stop a halfhour later, would they have returned from the library before he left the house? Where had she been when he closed the door behind him for the last time?
    And had she arrived home in time, would she have known that it would have been good-bye? Would she have kissed him more passionately, some unknown intuition gnawing at her to give him yet one more hug?
    She had not said good-bye, had not kissed him.
    Before leaving the house, she’d stood in the doorway watching his meticulous measuring of the wallpaper. He looked up from his work and yanked the earbuds off.
    “Looks great,” she’d said. “The room will be gorgeous. Certainly suitable for visiting royalty.”
    “Or at the very least, my sister. Where’re you off to?”
    “Errands,” she’d replied. “Then to pick up Callie for a very quick trip to the library so she can get the one last book she needs to complete her social studies report.”
    “What’s she doing? Something on Native Americans? She talk to Meg?”
    “Last week. She also talked Meg into taking photographs of the reservations around Tulsa and mailing them out so she’d have them in time for her report, which is due before Meg’s arrival. Callie figures this to be an easy A.”
    John had chuckled, knowing his sister, who coanchored the evening news at a network affiliate in Tulsa, would gladly give her only niece more information than any nine-year-old would ever be able to assimilate.
    “Well, hopefully, Meg won’t get carried away and include some of her boyfriend’s political speeches on the abuse of the Native Americans at the hands of the U.S. government.”
    “Clinton has historical