Possessions Read Online Free PDF Page B

must go there,” Victoria had said the day before. “Telephoning won’t do.” She had burst into his conference room just ahead of his protesting secretary, stopping the staff assistant to the mayor of San Francisco in the middle of asentence. “Ross, I must talk to you. Now.” Her hair was windblown and the silk scarf at her neck askew—the first time in his thirty-five years that Ross had seen his grandmother even faintly disheveled or permitting herself to show emotion in public.
    He pushed back his chair at the head of the conference table. “I think you all know my grandmother,” he said, aware that Victoria was on first-name terms with many of these men and women, dining and sitting on boards of directors with them, and entertaining them in her home. She greeted them brusquely and Ross took her arm. “If you’ll excuse me a moment—you can criticize my plans without the static of my biased opinion.”
    The city director of planning waved a hand. “We haven’t discussed rents—”
    â€œThe figures are on page forty. If you’ll go over them, I won’t be long.” Ross ushered Victoria through a door into his office, leaving behind San Francisco’s top government officials, who’d been studying and debating his architectural plans for months. And it would be months more before they approved every detail so that work on the three-hundred-million-dollar project, called BayBridge Plaza, could begin. He wanted to be with them, defending his ideas, speeding the process along, but his grandmother demanded his attention. He sat beside her on the couch. “Tell me what’s happened.”
    â€œLook at this.” Her trembling hand held out a copy of the Vancouver News. “Tobias saw it at one of those international newsstands. Craig’s picture—”
    Her voice broke on Craig’s name. Ross looked at the frontpage picture, read the story and looked again, remembering Craig. Slowly he shook his head. This was a stranger, with a high forehead, full face and deep lines on either side of his nose, disappearing into a heavy beard. Not Craig, who had been thin and boyish, hair falling over his forehead, shadowed hollows in his cheeks. Still, there was something about the smile, and the clinging sadness of the eyes . . .
    â€œOf course there’s the beard,” said Victoria. “And he’s much older. But the eyes! And that smile! Ross? Isn’t it Craig?”
    Ross shook his head, anxious to get back to his meeting. “I doubt it. There is a resemblance, but only a suggestion of one; it’s interesting, but—”
    â€œInteresting! What is the matter with you?” She sat straight,her eyes blazing at him. “Do you think I don’t know my own grandson? And even if, perhaps, I had some doubt, I thought I could count on your curiosity and stubbornness—but all you do is wave aside this interesting resemblance. What in heaven’s name is wrong with you?” She saw him glance at the door to the conference room. “Well—you want to get back. Why don’t you simply agree to do what I ask? Then I’ll leave you alone.”
    Ross laughed and gently adjusted the scarf at his grandmother’s throat. “All right; what is it you’re asking me to do?”
    â€œGo up there. Find out the truth for me.”
    â€œTo Vancouver? My dear, you can’t ask me to drop everything to search out a stranger just because he seems to resemble someone you haven’t seen for fifteen years.”
    â€œWill you stop being so cautious! I don’t think this is a stranger and I’m asking you to find out for me. For heaven’s sake, who else can I ask?”
    â€œTobias,” Ross suggested. “Claude—”
    â€œFor some favors. Not this one. Ross, I must know.”
    Ross was rereading the story. “He’s disappeared, it says. I