Offspring Read Online Free PDF

children by him.
    Luke.
    Poor Luke.
    With a forger for a father
.
    When she thought about that and thought about Claire these days she felt angry and sad and wished to god she had the power to hurt the bastard.
    And lucky. She also felt lucky.
    She could hear David running water in the sink. He always wasted water when he shaved but if that was all the trouble you had with a guy—that and the fact that he could never remember to put the toilet seat down and dropped his goddamn ashes all over the place because he could never seem to find an ashtray when he needed one—you didn’t have trouble at all. And you damn well knew it.
    Her father, bless him, had told her she would meet a man like this one day and she had never believed him, perhaps because part of her thought her father
was
that man and she’d come across nobody even vaguely like him. Yet one day there he was. Sexy, thoughtful, a good partner and by now, a proven good companion. He shared the chores, the responsibilities with Melissa, diapered her, fed her, got up nightsthose first two difficult months . . . and clearly saw in Amy an equal both at work and in their marriage.
    She had come to recognize a certain distance in him since his father had died of cancer three years ago. He had loved the lazy, sweet old man and he’d taken it hard. She knew he brooded on it occasionally. When she questioned him he’d only say he missed him. The words rang true. But she wondered if, without him knowing it, his feelings also ran deeper.
    He worked so long, so late and hard. As though racing some internal clock. Lately he’d talked about quitting smoking.
    She wondered if he was starting to become afraid of death. If his father’s dying had added some ambiguous, questionable rider to the document of his own mortality.
    I’ll sleep when I’m dead
.
    If so, he didn’t seem aware of it.
    And he certainly didn’t look aware of anything remotely like that now, walking into the study in his washed-out red terry bathrobe and unlaced tennis sneakers. He looked alive and fresh and just a little ridiculous.
    “Got a start on the third board last night,” he said. He leaned over and kissed the top of her head, nuzzled her long curly red hair. She smelled soap and papaya shampoo.
    She was grateful that he was a man who had no truck with aftershave.
    “I know. I looked it over first thing this morning. You got a lot done. Looks good.”
    “Thank you.”
    “You’re very welcome.”
    “Coffee?”
    “On the stove.”
    “Terrific.”
    From the kitchen he said, “What time’s Claire coming?”
    “Twoish.”
    “Good. Gives me time to fix the cord on the table lamp. Shorted out on me last night, around two in the morning. I’ve got to reinsulate the wire. We’ve got electrician’s tape floating around here somewhere, don’t we?”
    “There’s some in the basement, I think.”
    He walked back into the study and looked over her shoulder at the monitor. Then he looked down at her breasts where the robe had fallen away.
    “How are you making out?”
    “I haven’t really started. I got to thinking about Claire.”
    He nodded, sipped his coffee. They’d discussed it all before. She didn’t need to explain. She knew he felt pretty much the same. He was Claire’s friend too.
    “Listen,” she said. “How’d you like to run the vacuum in about an hour? Let Melissa sleep till then. So that I can do some work here.”
    “No problem.”
    He walked to the glass double doors. The sun was bright outside. He opened them and a breeze ruffled the papers beside her.
    “Jesus!” he said. “I almost forgot. An
amazing
thing this morning! Are we aware of some retro-hip latter-day commune out this way? Something on that order?”
    She looked up from the monitor.
    “Excuse me?”
    “There was a girl out here this morning, way on out in the field. A little after dawn. Real long hair and naked as my mother bore me.”
    “A girl?”
    “Yeah. Sixteen, seventeen maybe. She was