Possessions Read Online Free PDF Page A

company, our solicitor, the accountant—I have no choice; I have to go to the police!”
    Like a missile, Todd flung himself across the room at Doerner. “You can’t go to the police about my Dad, you bastard; you’re a liar—!”
    â€œTodd!” Katherine pulled Todd’s battering hands away from Doerner and knelt to hold him against her. As he buried his face in her shoulder, crying noisily, she saw Jennifer watching stonily from the doorway.
    â€œJust a minute,” she said to Doerner. Taking Jennifer and Todd by the hand, she led them upstairs. “I promise we’ll talkabout this in a few minutes.” Her voice was shaky and she cleared her throat. “But I want you up here. I do not want you downstairs. Is that clear?” When they nodded, their eyes wide and blank, she went slowly downstairs. Doerner was still in the middle of the room.
    â€œBetrayed his kids, too.” His face was dark. “Son of a bitch. Bad enough he let me down, but to do that to you and the kids . . . by God he deserves whatever he gets! I treated him like a son but now he’s going to pay—!”
    â€œCarl, don’t go to the police. Please. Can’t you wait? One more day, just until tomorrow. Craig must have been on his way home when something happened . . . he’s ill or hurt . . . you don’t know! If he really did take that money he wouldn’t run away; he’d make it up to you. We’d both make it up to you. Please, Carl. You’ve waited this long. Please.”
    Doerner flung out his hands. “What the hell. One more day. Tomorrow’s Monday; I’ll call you at noon. I can’t wait any longer than that.” Katherine nodded. “Well, then.” He sighed. “He really left you in the lurch. I wish there was something—” He waited but Katherine was silent. “Well, then—” Another moment and he was gone, passing beneath the porch light that was blazing for the third night in a row.
    A few more hours for Craig, Katherine thought. I don’t even know if he needs them. Or what else he might need. Not knowing was a leaden weight inside her, so heavy it made her feel sick. She thought of the dinner they had made and could not imagine eating it.
    But they all picked at it while Katherine told Jennifer and Todd, sketchily, what Doerner had said. “We only have his word for it,” she finished, refusing to think about the envelope he’d offered her; it could have been anything. “We won’t know the real story until Daddy gets back. All we can do is wait. We’ll hear from the police, or Daddy will walk in the front door and explain everything.”
    â€œDaddy wouldn’t run away,” Jennifer said.
    â€œOf course not.” Katherine remembered the jokes she’d heard about wives who preferred to think that an overdue husband was injured rather than unfaithful. Which do I want, she wondered grimly. Craig in an accident or Craig running from a crime?
    It kept her awake for another night in their cold bed. Craig,I want you home. She was crying. Please come home. I want you safe, and everything the way it used to be. But the next day, when Doerner called exactly at noon, she had nothing to tell him. And so he called the police.
    An hour later, a different pair of officers appeared at her door, older than the first two, with different questions and a keener scrutiny of Katherine and her house.
    â€œNice,” said one, pacing off the living room and admiring the view through the curved wall of windows. “My wife,” said the other, “always wanted to live in West Vancouver. Too expensive for us; too expensive for most people.” When Katherine did not respond, they sat down and asked questions, hammering at her husband’s purchasing habits, travel, debts, gambling, women, gifts, drinking, drugs . . . But Katherine had become