Generation V Read Online Free PDF Page A

the base of the stairs, I could see that there was a small red stain on his shirt collar.
    Madeline’s interest lay in politics and power. I’d met senators, congressmen, CEOs, and three future presidents, all over her dinner table. During the downfall of Enron I’d watched C-SPAN as a whole parade of my mother’s former visitors testified before Congress. Having no desire to talk with yet another politician, I quietly walked out of the main hallway and through opulent yetsteadily more restrained rooms until I reached the family living room. It’s still expensive as all hell, but it is the difference between a Fabergé egg and a Rolex watch. With parquet floors, oriental rugs, a granite fireplace, and small clusters of comfortable armchairs and sofas, it’s a welcome retreat from the showboating that goes on in the rooms where Madeline conducts her entertainment. Tall, narrow windows give the viewer breathtaking views of the back rose garden. You have to know where to look to see the tall wooden shutters that can be easily drawn over the windows and locked in place. As a family area, it has a balance between Madeline’s comfort and her children’s desire for daytime views. In Madeline’s suite of rooms on the second floor, where many of her visitors end up, it takes a careful eye to see around the sumptuousness and notice that there isn’t a single window.
    Ensconced in the chair closest to the windows was a thin woman with loose black hair that curled its way down her back, and rich brown skin that perfectly offset her bright red dress. There was a white knitted blanket draped over her lap, and someone had turned on a small lamp for her, forming a small nimbus of cheerful light in the increasing twilight. She was deeply involved in a paperback book, the turning of pages the only sound besides the distant rhythm of the ocean that drifted in through the open window.
    I didn’t think I made a sound, but something alerted her, and she glanced up. Her large dark eyes widened, and she smiled.
    “Fortitude!” she said, stretching out one hand to me. I crossed the room quickly to take it. I squeezed it carefully,aware of how delicate her hand felt. There was an overall air of fragility that hadn’t been present the last time I’d seen her.
    “Bhumika. It’s good to see you,” I lied. Seeing her always hurt. “Are you staying downstairs for dinner?” Over the past year, Bhumika had steadily fallen more and more into the habit of having dinner upstairs in the suite she shared with Chivalry. And to call it dinner tended to push it—most nights, she was asleep before six.
    “Of course, sweetheart. It’s been so long since I saw you that I insisted. I want to hear all about what you’re doing up in Providence and how much fun you’re having.”
    Bhumika was Chivalry’s wife. She was his third spouse that I’d known. When my foster parents were killed, Madeline decided that it would be too risky to put me with another set of humans, so I lived in the mansion until I finished high school. After the shock of Jill’s and Brian’s deaths, I spent weeks refusing to talk with anyone. My family tried to force me to talk again, either subtly or directly, but it was Chivalry’s then-wife Carmela who brought me out of it. She just inserted me into her everyday routine, taking me along grocery shopping, her daily walks on the beach, her soap operas, talking almost constantly the entire time, a steady monologue of her thoughts and impressions that made no demands at all on me. She didn’t try to justify the deaths to me, or tell me to forget them. She just let me grieve for them, acting as a buffer between me and the world as long as I needed it. She could never replace Jill and Brian, but I did love her. I was fifteen when she died, and it hurt likehell. I was never really able to forgive her replacement, Linda, even though she was very nice and showed tremendous grace through the worst of my teenage angst. I was