Found and Lost Read Online Free PDF

girl-meets-guy. The giggling remained a constant. Tonight, the safety of that sound loosened his inner knot of reproach, but the accusations still muttered. You could’ve been arrested last night. Your family could be sitting in a Constabulary interview room right now.
    Clay settled into one of the stuffed chairs, woke his laptop from hibernation, and signed into his email. Yup, seven new messages in the Lit Philes thread. The newest one showed up first, less than a paragraph from Zena. LOL. No way. Prof Hansen will confirm my viewpoint.
    Oh, excellent. His students were squabbling. He clicked Omar’s email, the last one sent before Zena’s.
    How can you place limitations on deconstructionist theory? The definition of the theory precludes limitation.
    Clay cracked his knuckles over his keyboard and grinned at the screen. If only these bubbling, blossoming English majors knew how they prevented job withdrawal over the summer. The group had picked up a few new students every year for the last three. Right now, they numbered eleven, including him as facilitator. He clicked on the oldest unread message. Apparently several of them were already well into reading My Antonia , not the ideal work for deconstructionism. Then again, Omar applied deconstructionism to, well, everything.
    Khloe barreled into the den and flopped down on the sofa, her frame barely stretching across all three cushions. Violet followed at a stroll and perched on one arm.
    Khloe half buried her face in the cushion. “Dad, can we claim the TV now?”
    â€œDon’t you want to wait until the cookies are done?”
    â€œCan’t you smell them?”
    He inhaled and noticed the aroma that had resided in his subconscious for a while now. “Oh, yeah. They don’t smell burned or anything.”
    Khloe threw a pillow at him. “They’re not.”
    â€œI’ll trade you the TV for a few cookies.” They’d been making the same bargain since Khloe and Violet’s first batch of Pillsbury, spooned from a plastic tub of premade dough, baked with Natalia’s eye on the timer, and presented to Clay with great ceremony.
    â€œIt’s a deal,” Violet said.
    Khloe turned her head toward Violet. “Let’s make smoothies, too.”
    â€œYou’d better wash the blender,” Clay said.
    â€œOr Mom will disinherit me!” She flailed on the couch like an overturned turtle.
    â€œAnd kick you out.”
    â€œFor my own good, to teach me responsibility, because a clean blender is a sign of character.”
    Clay stood and stretched, drawing the motion out with all the drama of his daughter. “I’m just saying I’m not cleaning it this time. To teach you responsibility. Would I like the movie?”
    â€œNope,” the girls chorused.
    He gave a mock bow and carried his laptop under his arm, through the kitchen, past the paper plate on the counter. He swiped two warm cookies and stuffed one into his mouth. A melted chip smeared his thumb. Mmm. Sweet and a little gooey. Natalia’s laptop sat a few feet from the cookies, still cycling through the slideshow of Britney Yokomoto’s senior pictures. The girl stood in an orchard, a line of trees blurring behind her. The tilt of her mouth and the lift of her glossy hair lent an almost provocative aura to some of the pictures. For Pete’s sake, she was only eighteen.
    Clay ambled out to the deck with his cookies and his laptop. He’d texted a few buddies, thrown together a bowling night, but nobody was free before nine-thirty. So he lounged here in an Adirondack chair, typed an email to his lit students, and listened to the girls’ laughter from inside the house. Something like nostalgia rolled over him for the days when Violet stood as high as his hip and Khloe six inches shorter than that, and neither of them cared to look sexy.
    Enough old-man thoughts. He wasn’t even forty yet, though the unsettling number loomed