Broken Read Online Free PDF

Samuel’s been here since half past five. I set him up in the kitchen with a mug of coffee and the newspaper, but you know how he gets rutchy, setting too long.”
    Guilt at my selfishness pricked me. “You go on ahead. I’m sorry you had to wait.”
    She fluttered her hands. “Pshaw. Not to worry. Just remember to turn it to low when you’re done, so’s it don’t boil down, and I’ll put it away in the morning. Oh, and your sister called. I wrote down her message by the phone.”
    She really took excellent care of us. I smiled. “Thanks, Mrs. Lapp.”
    She nodded and headed back the hall toward the kitchen and her impatient husband. Belly empty and growling, I postponed my dinner for another few minutes. I climbed the narrow stairs, a hand on the carved and polished railing Mrs. Lapp kept so clean.
    At the top of the stairs, I stopped to listen. To my right was the short part of the hall, with the bathroom, the guest room, the elevator and the stairs to the third floor. To my left, the long part of the hall, with two more rooms, the entrance to the back stairs and the master bedroom and bath. From upstairs I heard the faint sound of the television and then the creak of footfalls. Dennis. A moment later he peered over the railing.
    I liked Dennis. At six-foot-two-inches and 230 pounds, he looked like a linebacker, but he was equally sensitive as he was strong. Though he’d only been with us for two years, I could no more do without him than I could with Mrs. Lapp.
    “Hi, Sadie. You’re home late.”
    “Traffic,” I told him, too.
    “I’ll be going out in about twenty minutes. I’ll check on him before I go,” he told me and disappeared into his room again. I heard him talking, then making some calls.
    Everything has its price, and the cost of having Dennis and Mrs. Lapp was my privacy. No matter how often I wistfully remembered being able to walk around in my underwear and eat peanut butter straight from the jar, that life was a part of the past. My mother-in-law euphemistically called them “help.” I called them necessity. The three of us worked together like synchronized machinery to keep this household functioning. Without them, I’d have been lost.
    I paused in Adam’s doorway to put on the right face. A pleased half-smile with just the right touch of weariness to indicate the battles of the highway. A fond gaze.
    Adam was already in bed, but he turned his head to look at me when I came through the doorway. He’d been reading something on his laptop. “Close program,” he ordered the computer. He could operate most everything in his room via the voice-operated command system. “You’re late tonight.”
    “I feel so loved. You’re the third person tonight to tell me so.” I kept the reply light, joking, slipping so easily into the role of wife.
    I pushed the computer table out of the way and bent to brush his lips with my evening kiss. His mouth felt cold beneath mine, and I closed my eyes, willing it to warm.
    “Long day?” Adam asked when I’d pulled away. “You look bushed.”
    Even before I could answer, my stomach gurgled, and I put my hand overtop to quiet it. “Mrs. Lapp made soup. I’ll go have some. I wanted to say hi, first.”
    He smiled again, still looking so much like the man I’d fallen in love with it made my guts hurt. “Hi.”
    “Hi.” I reached to push his hair off his forehead. His mouth had been cold but his forehead and cheeks were flushed. “You feel warm.”
    “Ah, you caught me reading.” He wiggled his eyebrows. For a man without the use of anything below his shoulders, Adam never had a problem making his expressions clear.
    I looked at his laptop. “You’re reading smut again?”
    “Please.” He affected a haughty tone. “It’s literature.”
    “For class or for fun?” I stroked my hand across his forehead again, pretending a caress but really checking for fever.
    “Class.”
    Adam’s poetry had once won national awards. Now he taught online