Maggy's Child Read Online Free PDF

the white-painted door in front of him.
    “Hmmm?” Maggy looked rather wearily at the back of his head, knowing herself once again defeated. As always, Lyle had won the battle for David’s allegiance. But instead of saying anything David turned suddenly and wrapped his arms tight around her waist, burying his face between her breasts. Surprised, Maggy nevertheless enfolded him against her. With a wordless little murmur she hugged him close, pressing her lips to the tumbled locks atop his head.
    “I love you, Mom.” The words were muffled, uttered with a kind of fierce defiance that made Maggy ache. A child shouldn’t have to tell his mother he loved her in that tone. What had she done, to herself and to him, on that miserably humid night twelve years ago when she had forever linked their future with Lyle’s? David was hers, hers , and yet Lyle stood forever between them. Lyle, whom she hated and David adored.
    “I know, sweetheart. I love you too.” It was all she could do to keep her voice steady. But for David, she managed it. He was just eleven years old, and she would not burden him with the pain that was by rights all hers.
    David gave her a quick, hard hug before shoving free. Then, turning to jerk open the door, he almost ran from the room.
    The force of his shove caused her to stagger back a pace. After recovering her balance, Maggy stepped out into the hall, watching him as he vanished into his own room two doors down from hers. A smallish bedroom suite that had once belonged to the nanny Lyle had insisted on when David was younger was located between them. Since Miss Hadley’s retirement two years before, it had been converted into a playroom for David.
    David had left his door open. He vanished into his room without looking back, and the door slammed behind him. Maggy stood without moving for a moment longer, hands clasped in front of her, eyes unseeing. Then she turned and reentered her room, locking the door behind her in a gesture that had become automatic over the years.
    David had said that he loved her. Well, she loved him, too. Enough to do anything for him. To give up anything for him.
    Enough to give up everything for him. Which, she sometimes thought, was just what she had done.

T he next day, Saturday, April 11, was Maggy’s thirtieth birthday. She rose at six A.M . as was her habit, did her regular twenty minutes on the LifeCycle in her bathroom, brushed her teeth, washed her face and smeared on a little of the creamy sun-block that she used to protect her fair skin anytime she so much as stuck her nose outside. Later she would shower, wash and style her hair, and dress for the day, but these early-morning hours were hers, and she refused to waste a single minute on something as superfluous as an elaborate toilette. Running a quick brush through the tangled shoulder-blade-length strands of her hair, she secured the heavy mass of it with a tortoiseshell barrette at her nape and moved into her dressing room. Quickly she pulled on jeans so old and well-worn that they were faded almost white on the knees and seat, a man’s small-size T-shirt topped by a baggy white cotton pullover sweater, and an olive-green hooded anorak, and slipped out of the house. Rubberized boots that came halfway up her calves protected her feet from the soaked ground as she headed toward the kennels where her two Irish wolfhounds, Seamus and Bridey, were already barking in anticipation of her arrival.
    The time was just a few minutes past six thirty. The sun, barely up, was a chilly-looking ball hanging low in the lightening sky to the east, just above where the thickly treed hills of the Kentucky and Indiana shores were partedby the Ohio River. The rain had stopped sometime during the night, but the air was cold and Maggy’s breath rose in little frosty puffs as she shoved at the latch on the eight-foot-tall fence that enclosed the dogs. At last it shot free, and the dogs came tumbling out, leaping over each other and