All of Me Read Online Free PDF Page A

resist.
    And when he discovered he’d not only inherited the famed Manning carpentry skills, but that he had a natural flare for architecture
     as well, the world beat a path to his door. He had put himself through architectural school with his carpentry skills. For
     his senior class project, twenty-two-year-old Tuck had designed and constructed an innovative learning center for elementary
     schoolchildren. Then something amazing and bizarre happened.
    The grade point average of every single child enrolled in Tuck’s new learning center shot up.
    Tuck brushed if off to coincidence. But educators seemed convinced it was the building. They claimed something about the lighting
     and the open-air blueprint stimulated learning. Other schools heard what had happened, and they commissioned Manning Learning
     Centers.
    Tuck designed them. Each and every time, test scores rose and grade point averages shot up. Tuck figured it was a self-fulfilling
     prophecy. People thought their children would get smarter in his buildings, so they did.
    Architectural Digest
ran a feature story on him, dubbing him “Magic Man.” He traveled the world building schools and getting rich.
    Then he met Aimee Townsend in Albany, New York. A kindergarten teacher by trade. Beautiful girl. Petite. Honey-blond hair,
     big blue eyes, creamy porcelain complexion. Wearing a
Wizard of Oz
green sweater and a short brown wool skirt. Nice legs. No pantyhose. Wholesome and heartwarming.
    Tuck had designed and built
that
classroom as if it was just for her.
    Two months later, they were married and bought a loft in Manhattan. He loved city life, but Aimee was a small-town girl at
     heart, and she made him promise that when they were ready to start a family, they would move to the place where she’d spent
     her summer vacations as a kid before her parents got divorced. The place she loved most in the world.
    Salvation, Colorado.
    Tuck had said glibly, easily, “Sure. Why not?” Kids were a long way off.
    Then Aimee got very sick with a deadly form of ovarian cancer. He took her from doctor to doctor. Private clinic to exclusive
     hospital. They consulted experts in Europe and Japan. They went through most of his money, but Tuck didn’t care. All he wanted
     was to save his wife.
    In the end, Aimee had whispered, “Take me to Colorado, Tuck. That’s where I want to die. At the lake house. In Salvation.”
    And that was where the magic had run out.
    Now Tuck hunkered alone in a small rowboat in the middle of Salvation Lake in Salvation, Colorado. In spite of his down coat,
     the wind sliced through him, as cold as a ceramic blade. To warm himself, he took another swig from the bottle of Johnny Walker
     Red at his feet. The whiskey neatly seared the back of his throat.
    “Look at the stars, Aimee,” Tuck whispered into the midnight sky carpeted with a thousand points of starlight. “Brilliant
     as the night I asked you to marry me. Remember?”
    The water stretched out around him, inky black and vast. He was a good fifty yards from shore, where the first snowfall of
     the season clung to the pine trees, looming up like ghostly giants.
    “I know I didn’t get started on renovating the lake house this year like I promised. A lot of things got in the way. Chick
     Halsey hired me to add a bedroom onto his house, because he and Addie are expecting another baby. Their fourth. And before
     that, Jessie Dolittle had me build a pole barn for some new mules. Then there were the special-order cabinets for an older
     couple that just moved up here from Denver. Now the lake house will have to wait because of winter. I’m sorry to disappoint
     you again, babe. I’ll get started on it come spring, I promise.”
    Another slug of the Johnny Walker and he was a regular furnace inside.
    He could picture Aimee sitting across from him in the rowboat. Her long blond hair trailing down her back, her blue eyes aglow,
     looking the way she’d looked the night he proposed. Right