Dreams for Stones Read Online Free PDF Page B

time.
    That done, she went to the bedroom and,
averting her eyes from the bed, re-packed before consulting the
phone book a second time to call a cab. When it arrived, she left
without looking back.
    Continental’s ticket counter was closed for
the night, and only a few people were scattered around the
terminal.
    A janitor pushed a mop to the rhythms of
whatever played in his headphones, and a young man slept on the
floor with his backpack under his head, both of them blissfully
unaware of their surroundings.
    Envy of their oblivion flared, faded as she
chose a seat away from everyone else.
    The unreality that had set in after Greg
left the apartment lasted through the remainder of the night. She
knew it would eventually desert her, but as long as it lasted, she
accepted it with relief.
    In the morning, as the clerk did the ticket
rewrite, Kathy handed over her credit card, letting herself neither
think about the additional cost nor question her decision to leave
Greg’s money, torn into hundreds of tiny pieces, on the table.
Shredding it had been a totally mad, but completely satisfying
thing to do.
    Still numb, she boarded the flight, but
halfway back to Denver, the numbness wore off, and pain and anger
surged through her in a huge, swamping wave.
    She bit her lip, hard, to stop a howl and
pressed her forehead against the window. Tears ran into her
fingers, as six miles below, the landscape crept past, mostly a
lifeless brown but here and there marked with the gaping red wounds
of canyons.
    Words. She’d let him off with words. Not
enough. Never again would she not fight back when someone hurt
her.
    By the time they landed in Denver, the tears
had stopped, and she was relieved to discover she no longer felt
like crying. Instead she was so exhausted, she could barely keep
her eyes open.
    But maybe that was just because she’d
forgotten the earplugs.
     
~ ~ ~
    Kathy stood in the doorway at Calico Cat Books, imagining the room
filled with women in graceful gowns and men in formal dress instead
of the chaos of tables, desks, and file cabinets all stacked with
lopsided piles of paper. Yesteryear’s ballroom, today’s publishing
company. What she’d traded Greg for.
    She thought about her work. The excitement
of a new find. The daily conversations, jokes, and laughter. The
feeling of accomplishment when a book came out. And she thought
about the people. Calico’s co-owners—Polly Lewis and Columba
Whitlow. Polly with her quirky sense of humor and careless clothes
and Columba, with her dry wit and Jackie Kennedy elegance. And Jade
Mizoguchi, her fellow editor. Jade, whose serenity kept the rest of
them sane.
    So, would she have made the same choice to
stay in Denver had she known from the beginning Greg would forget
her almost as soon as she disappeared from his rear view
mirror?
    But it was a different question now. Because
now she knew Greg was the kind of man who would sleep with a woman
as if he were checking out a pair of shoes or test-driving a
car.
    Remembering that part of it, she felt as
dumb as a pet rock. Did the whole miserable sequence of events
really have to play out before she could see through the dazzle
that Greg wasn’t the man she thought he was? And that was the important point. The point she needed to focus on whenever the
anger and grief choked her.
    He wasn’t the man she thought he was.
    “Kathy?”
    With a start, she turned to find Jade, face
full of concern, staring at her.
    “I didn’t think you were coming back until
next week.”
    “Yeah, that was the plan.” Kathy held
up her bare left hand.
    Jade took Kathy’s hand and folded it between
hers. “Oh, honey. What happened?”
    “Someone named Julie.”
    “Oh, I am so sorry. Are you okay?”
    Kathy took a deep breath and looked around
Calico and then back at Jade. She wasn’t ready to smile yet, but at
least she no longer felt like crying. She had been saved, after
all, from becoming Greg’s wife, something she now knew would