Dogs Read Online Free PDF Page B

Paris and North Africa? She’d been pummeling her brain during the long commute home, and had come up with nothing.
    They hadn’t even had many Arabic friends. Salah, so cosmopolitan, so at home in three languages on just as many continents, had adjusted easily to becoming an American. In fact, it sometimes seemed to Tessa that, except for his mother and sister in Tunis, Salah had shed his old life as easily as a bird shedding feathers. He had enjoyed parties with her friends. He had developed an interest in the Yankees. He was passionate about jazz. He—
    The phone rang; Caller I.D. announced Tessa’s sister, twenty miles away in Frederick. “Hey, Ellen.”
    â€œHey yourself. Are you getting settled?”
    Tessa looked around at the total chaos. “Sort of.”
    â€œCan I help?”
    â€œI think you’ve got your hands full enough.” Tessa said. Ellen, although two years younger than Tessa, had three children, a husband, two cats, and an amazing collection of gerbils to care for. Nonetheless, after Salah’s death, Ellen had consigned the entire menagerie to her mother-in-law and come to stay with Tessa for two weeks, helping her pack and listening to her cry. This was all the more astonishing because Tessa and Ellen, who looked enough alike to have often been mistaken for twins, had never been close. Maybe because they’d looked too much alike. Tessa had wanted to be unique, and probably Ellen had, too.
    Over the last three months they’d kept the fragile, tragedy-born intimacy growing, nurturing it like some delicate rose. That wasn’t always easy; they had such radically different lives, perceptions, and personalities.
    â€œHow’s the baby?” Tessa said.
    â€œHe’s a vomit machine. Twice today already, and it’s projectile vomiting. I tell you, this is absolutely the last baby.”
    â€œWell, three is probably enough.” For Tessa, zero was enough.
    â€œAmen. How are you doing, Tessa? No, wait, I forgot—you don’t like to be asked that. I’m sorry.”
    â€œIt’s okay.”
    Awkward pause. Then Tessa said abruptly, “Can I ask you something?”
    â€œSure.” But Tessa heard the surprise and hesitation in Ellen’s voice. What was Ellen expecting?
    â€œAfter you and Jim got married, did he sort of…I don’t know, drift away from his old life? In favor of yours?”
    Ellen laughed. “Yes. Not all at once, mind you, but over the years I sort of turned into the social director for both of us. Except for a few golfing buddies, if I don’t arrange for us to see people, it doesn’t happen. I don’t think Jim’s in contact with any of his old friends, not since the last time we moved, anyway. I think that happens with a lot of married men.”
    Tessa hadn’t realized that. She said, “Oh,” unable to think of anything else. People aren’t really your forte, Maddox had always told her.
    Ellen said, “Look, if you want to—oh, God, he’s upchucking again! Gotta go, Tessa, bye!”
    What a life. Ellen, however, seemed fine with it. Tessa returned to the living room and dug through boxes until she found Salah’s laptop, the only kind of computer he’d liked. When she’d packed to move, she’d given away all his clothes, but not the laptop. She couldn’t. Not yet, maybe never. She set up the computer on the edge of a kitchen table ninety percent covered with plastic bags of food and a huge box containing her grandmother’s Wedgwood china, which Tessa would probably never even unpack.
    She knew Salah’s password. Was it right to use it? It felt like a violation. Although that was silly; Salah had never kept anything from her. She logged on and carefully, methodically, searched through his emails, outgoing and incoming, for any names she didn’t recognize. She discounted all the emails with the World Bank address. Those