Passing Through Paradise Read Online Free PDF Page A

Boston Red Sox cap, work boots and faded jeans. His hair was a little too long, his attitude too—
    A sudden pounding made her jump out of her seat, spilling her pen and notebook to the floor.
    She glanced at the door. It was broad daylight, she told herself, not the middle of the night. Still, she couldn’t keep from reaching for the fire poker next to the stove. Advancing toward the front door, she wished she could see through the sidelight, but a while back, it had been broken by a thrown rock and boarded up.
    Her fingers tightened on the brass handle of the poker and her breath came in quick gasps, inducing a brief dizziness. Given the threats and harassment she’d endured since Victor’s death, she had learned to respect and fear every bump and thump in the night. Or day.
    This is supposed to be over, she wanted to scream. It was an accident, damn it. But her lawyer had warned her that the ruling wouldn’t end her troubles. She’d learned to trust what he said.
    The knock sounded again. Louder, more insistent. Taking a deep breath, Sandra cracked open the door. The safety chain drew taut across the narrow gap. When she saw who it was, her knees turned warm and watery with relief. Thrusting the fire poker in the umbrella stand, she pressed the door shut, disengaged the chain and opened the door.
    The winter wind slung knife blades of penetrating cold into the drafty old house. Light-headed with relief, Sandra stepped aside to let her visitor in and quickly shut the door.
    She hadn’t been expecting her mother to make the drive from Providence, but somehow she wasn’t surprised to see her. “Come on in, Mom,” she said. “Come over by the fire, where it’s warm.”
    “Hello, sweetie. I brought you an afghan.” She held out a crinkly plastic bag.
    Sandra gave her a quick, tight hug. “Another Dorrie Babcock original. You spoil me.”
    “No, I knit like the wind.” Afghans were her specialty. She took up knitting in one of many attempts to quit smoking, and then she’d become one of those rare individuals capable of smoking and knitting simultaneously. “And where were you yesterday? I really wish you’d get an answering machine. I think you’re the only person on the planet who doesn’t have one.”
    Actually, Sandra did have one. She put it away soon after the accident—as soon as the anonymous messages started coming. “Sorry, Mom. You must’ve called while I was working outside. Chopping wood.” She held out her bandaged hands.
    “For heaven’s sake.” Dorrie smiled briefly before taking off her hat, then bent to unclasp the same plastic, shoe-shaped boots she’d worn for the past thirty-something years. As always, her hair was sculpted into lacquered dark swirls that, thanks to Miss Clairol, had not changed in decades, and only the deepening lines of character in her strong face betrayed her age.
    “So,” her mother said, hanging her coat on the hall tree. “Things are better, yes?”
    “Much,” she said. Aside from the fact that her mailbox was blown up and her house was falling down, everything was just peachy. But she forbade herself to complain to her mother. Throughout the ordeal, she’d done her best to shield her parents from the worst of the fallout—the constant hounding, the phone calls, the whispers and the doubts.
    Lord knew, Dorrie and Lou Babcock had put up with enough trouble from her when she was young.
    A framed picture of the three of them stood on the end of the desk. It had been taken when Sandra was about eleven. Her mother leaned against her father, hugging his arm while he grinned down at her. Sandra held her father’s hand, not quite smiling. She hadn’t smiled much when she was a kid.
    “I’ll go make tea,” Sandra said. She was a creature of habit. When company came, be it her mother or a party official, she fixed tea in cool weather and lemonade when it was warm. As she measured a spoonful of loose leaves into a chipped stoneware pot, she reflected that