Cold Springs Read Online Free PDF Page B

be something he couldn't—pushed so hard for so many years that he'd cracked, and whatever was inside had seeped out, slowly, until he was hollow to her. But still, Norma needed to believe he would respect her enough to come clean. That was one reason, in itself, to hang on to the dying marriage—that and Katherine.
    She could forgive Ann. She loved Ann. She loved her calmness, which Norma could never possess, and the way Ann really listened. When Norma had gone through breast cancer, it was Ann who helped her. No pity, no platitudes, no false sympathy—she was there from the second doctor's appointment on. She'd helped Norma accept the mastectomy, accept the fact that Katherine would now be an only child forever because the chemo had poisoned Norma's womb.
    And of course Chadwick would be drawn to her for comfort. Ann was his oldest friend. Always platonic, he'd sworn
—Ann knows me too well to fall for me,
he'd told Norma years ago. But hell, things had changed.
    Maybe Norma was crazy—still wanting Ann's friendship. But love and forgiveness had nothing to do with logic.
    Tonight, despite the heroin problem, Ann had given Mallory over to Katherine without a hesitation. “I'm sure it will be fine.”
    Norma had wanted to hug Ann. It was a vote of confidence not just for Katherine, but for Norma, too. It was somebody saying, “Yes, I understand you gave up your entire life to be a mother, and I do not think you failed.”
    Norma waited for Ann to say something.
    The hands of her watch glowed half past midnight. They really should have been home by now.
    “Oh, I give up,” John said. “This guy is too tough.”
    He punched Chadwick in the gut, and came over to the play structure, grinning. “Spread that quilt, girls. Let's picnic.”
    “Not a chance,
hijo,”
Norma told him. “It's warm. It's also seventy-five hundred dollars worth of artwork.”
    “Tax deductible,” John said.
    “You're not putting your butt on it, John Zedman.”
    He laughed, scooped up his champagne bottle.
    Chadwick stood off to one side, looking up at the murky orange soup of the sky.
    Norma suddenly longed for L.A. She wanted warm nights—shorts and T-shirts, a dry Santa Ana wind. She had lived here too long, allowed her child to be raised here. It wasn't healthy. Time had passed too quickly.
    She should have been a money manager by now—a banker, an accountant.
    Everybody at her public school had known Norma Reyes would make it. She could breathe numbers the way most people breathed air. The first girl ever to complete AP calculus. She would go far. It was the bitterest irony that she had ended up a full-time mother in a working-class barrio, just like her mother.
    But Norma was still young. Only two years, and Katherine would be off to college. Katherine would overcome her problems—Norma was confident of that. Norma took fierce pride that her daughter had inherited her talent at math. Katherine could go to MIT. Or Columbia. She could get a scholarship.
    Then Norma could have her own career. She could let her marriage with Chadwick crumble, if it had to. Or perhaps, who knew? What kind of couple might they be without Katherine? They had never had the chance to find out. Maybe they would work things out after all.
    “Hey, Chadwick,” John said. “What—you lose something up there?”
    And when Chadwick looked down, straight at her, Norma knew it was coming. She knew him well enough to know he was planning a confession.
    Well, all right, she thought. We need a good fight. For once, maybe—a true knock-down-drag-out. Maybe the game of chicken ends here.
    And then the door at the top of the stairs burst open, and Gladys, Ann's secretary, came running down from the office, her dress shoes clacking against wooden steps, her breath smoking.
    “There's a call,” she gasped, stopping halfway down, shouting to them. “Oh, God. The police are asking for you.”
             
    At ten-thirty, Katherine put Mallory in front of the