Out of Range: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

The task seemed so daunting that rather than search for the solution, Julie tried to pinpoint when exactly they’d started drifting from each other.
    Had the seeds been sown that day in Babur Square? No. Those first few weeks in London, when he was recuperating from his injuries and she was recovering from Oliver’s traumatic birth, they had never been closer.
    And when Charlie had suggested that they fly to Los Angeles, she hadn’t blanched. At the time they were, in effect, homeless. They couldn’t go back to Uzbekistan yet, and neither had a place in the U.S. or the UK. She had no family to speak of in London—her father had died a year earlier and her mother was dwindling away in a rest home in Sussex—so when Charlie’s old college buddy Sal Peretti extended an invitation for them to “come out to the coast” for a few weeks, it had seemed like a perfect place for them both to clear their heads.
    In short order, Sal had offered Charlie a coveted, well-paid gig at the LA Times and Julie had to agree that making a life for themselves in Southern California made a world of sense.
    But as she rose now from their bed and gazed out the window at the palm trees in their yard, she realized it was that first concession which had started them on this path. At the time, she thought Los Angeles was going to be merely a pit stop, assuming that at some point they would resume their old careers abroad.
    She had tried at various moments to broach the subject with Charlie, but he was always adamant. He would not subject Julie or the children to any kind of danger just to serve their adventurous inclinations or overdeveloped sense of heroism. Julie thought that he was being unfair—to both of them—but she understood his position. And she told herself that he wanted to stay more than she wanted to leave.
    So she had let it go. Because she wanted to make him happy and she knew she had little to complain about. Charlie was a devoted father and loving husband—smart and funny, sweet and giving with the kids yet tough when he needed to be. More important, she felt grateful every day that they’d all survived that brutal day in Andijan, that they’d become a family. It so easily could have gone the other way. Of course, it was precisely this cocktail of compassion, gratitude and guilt that kept her from confronting the simmering resentments that had been building in their marriage.
    And now she had betrayed his trust.
    Out of the shower now, she lifted her suitcase onto the bed and began to unpack her clothes when she saw that she’d forgotten to remove the baggage claim ticket.
    It was a stunningly careless mistake. Or had she subconsciously left it there, hoping that Charlie would notice it and catch her in the lie?
    She caught a glance of herself in the mirror and rolled her eyes. Here she was, wearing a pink Mickey Mouse sweatshirt, preparing for a day at Disneyland. If any of them downstairs only knew where she’d been the past four days.
    She grabbed hold of the sticky ticket and ripped it off her luggage.
    C harlie put the childrens’ food on their plates, turned off the stove and checked his watch. He knew Julie had gotten in late and wanted to let her sleep, but the kids would be getting antsy soon enough and he had to be at work by nine.
    “Jules, are you up? Breakfast is ready!”
    As if on cue, Julie bustled into the room with an exuberant rallying cry. “Is everybody ready for the Magic Kingdom?”
    Meagan assaulted her mother, wrapping her arms around her neck. “We missed you!”
    “Oh, and I missed you guys so much!” Julie cooed, smothering her with kisses, then setting her back on her feet.
    “I didn’t,” Ollie announced with the straightest of faces. Charlie knew this was his son’s way of saying he wasn’t particularly thrilled with his mother’s recent excursion to the Big Apple.
    “Well, did you miss . . . Derek Jeter?” Julie winked at Charlie and whipped out an autographed