Desire Lines Read Online Free PDF

goes over to the counter and pours herself some coffee. “Been up long?”
“Not really. I had these awful dreams. How’s the garden?” Picking up a pen, Kathryn begins drawing daisy chains around the headlines on the front page.
“Oh, I’ll tell you, Kath, I get the most satisfaction from it.” She sits down and takes little sips of her coffee. “The irises are flourishing, and even the clematis is beginning to bloom. Last month I dug in some horse manure, and it’s made a big difference. You have to come out back and let me give you a tour.”
“Sure,” she says. For some reason her mother’s forced cheeriness, especially in the morning, often has the effect of making her grumpy and monosyllabic.
Her mother sighs with exaggerated contentment. “You know what? Honestly? I don’t know if you’ve come to this realization yet, but being single is really all right. You have so much time to do what you want. Marriage can be so limiting.”
“Umm.” Kathryn adds stems and leaves to some of the larger daisies.
“In fact, I may never get married again. Who knows? When I divorced your father, I was just starting to figure out what I wanted. Like, remember how your dad always wanted vanilla-bean ice cream in those big square containers, never any other flavor, just boring vanilla bean? Well, I didn’t realize until he left that I don’t even like vanilla bean. Quite frankly, I detest it.” She shakes her head. “Can you imagine, all thoseyears of putting up with vanilla bean when I could’ve been eating a flavor I liked?”
Kathryn looks up. A headache is starting to take shape behind her ears. “You didn’t have to eat it, Mom,” she says stubbornly. “You could’ve bought your own ice cream.”
“But that’s just the point,” her mother says, leaning forward. “I didn’t know that I deserved to have what I wanted. And you know why? Because I thought your father was right about everything.” She sits back. “Boy, was I wrong!”
“So what’s your favorite flavor now?”
“I don’t have a favorite flavor,” she says breezily. “I pick and choose. I switch around.”
Kathryn nods, coloring in the daisy petals. Now they’re black-eyed Susans.
“Hey,” her mother says. “I forgot to tell you. Linda Pelletier and her husband, Ralph What’s-his-name, moved to Florida a couple of months ago, and their house is on the market.”
Kathryn puts down the pen. Linda Pelletier is Will and Jennifer’s mother. “What?”
“I think they just got sick of being here. Too much water under the bridge. Anyway, they’re gone now, and I’m showing their house. In fact, I need to go over there in a little while to air the place out. Do you want to come?”
“I can’t believe they just left,” Kathryn mumbles.
“Oh, honey, you can’t blame them. All the memories and everything, it must have been torture. I’m sure we have no idea.”
Kathryn knows the house well—a large, ramshackle Victorian on Lamott Street. Growing up, she spent countless hours at the Pelletiers’; the house was as familiar to her as her own. After her parents divorced, when she was twelve, and her family dissolved into enemy camps, she often sought refuge there. It was so different from her house, where there were strict rules about homework and television and junk foodand chores. The twins’ mother never seemed to care what they did, as long as they weren’t too loud and didn’t cause trouble.
For a while, from the outside at least, the Pelletiers had seemed like the perfect all-American family. The twins’ father, Pete, was a Rotarian who played first base in the local men’s softball league; their mother was a former Miss Penobscot County. Even as babies, Will and Jennifer were unusually beautiful and good-natured, winning the Best Baby contest at the Maine State Fair when they were two. But Kathryn had witnessed the fights behind closed doors, the mother’s secretiveness, the father’s drinking. She was spending the