Metamorphosis Read Online Free PDF Page A

lot, you know, with your father’s health and all. More than we can imagine.”
    He nodded. “It was a shock when she passed away,” he said. “I didn’t know there was anything wrong, or I would have been here.”
    “None of us knew,” she said, gesturing in the general direction of the street. “I wanted to tell you that.”
    “Thanks for saying so,” he said. “I can’t help but wonder, though.”
    “There’s no profit in wondering. Not now.”
    He let that one go.
    “I mean that a person has to move on after a death,” she said. “You can’t let the past take hold of you.”
    Abruptly he thought of the newspaper clipping, and he held it up. “I found this in the den just now,” he said. “Did you ever know…” He looked at the paper. “Madeleine Cummings? For some reason there’s a copy of her obituary lying out on my father’s desk.”
    “Oh, that was years ago,” she said. “Shortly after Warren and I moved in. We didn’t know her, really. No one in the neighborhood did. She kept to herself. She died young, and lay there in her bedroom for a long time before her niece found her. The house was in probate for what seemed like years, but eventually it went to the niece, who lived there for a couple of years, but then moved out without saying anything to anyone. There were renters a couple of times, fly-by-nights, but the house has been empty more than its been lived in. It was empty when your parents moved in. I suppose the niece is holding on to it as an investment, although I wish she wasn’t letting it run down. That’s senseless.”
    “I guess I was just wondering why the obituary would be lying around on the desk,” he said, giving it one last try.
    “I don’t know,” she told him. “I can’t imagine where it would have come from, it having happened so many years ago. Unless it was left in the house when the Sloanes separated. It could have been, I suppose. They’d been there long enough to have had a copy. Mrs. Sloane—Betty—left Bob pretty suddenly. I guess you really never know why things fall apart. You wouldn’t have guessed it would happen, though, if you knew them when they were younger. He was gone from the house a few weeks after his wife left. I remember your mom and dad piling some pieces of furniture in the carport for a couple of months and then selling it at a yard sale. That’s where we first got to know each other, really, at that sale. I brought a few things out of the kitchen and set up a table.”
    “That must be it,” he said. “The Sloanes. So nobody’s living over there now?” he asked, nodding at the empty house.
    She shook her head. “I wish there were. But I’m talking too much. You’ve got things to do.”
    “Thanks for bringing over the mail,” he said, “and for being a friend to my mother. I appreciate it.”
    “I wish I could have been a better friend to her.”
    “I wish the same thing,” he said truthfully, and just then it began to rain, enormous, widely spaced drops and the nearby reverberation of thunder.
    “Oh, my,” she said. “There it comes. I’ll leave you to it.” She turned and went down the steps, hurrying across the lawn through the rainy darkness toward her own house. He closed the door and tossed the mail onto the chair, but continued to stand at the window, watching the abandoned house, where there was once again a light, too late, now, for it to be a reflection of sunlight. It was apparently shining inside one of the back rooms. It seemed to wax and wane with the rainfall, although clearly that must be his imagination at work. But once the idea came into his mind, he began to dwell on it, watching as the wind came up, thrashing through the palm fronds. The rain came down more heavily again, and way back in the darkness of the house the light shimmered on and seemed to spread, as if the voltage were slowly being increased. And then after a time the rain faded to a drizzle, the light in the abandoned house