Prelude to a Wedding Read Online Free PDF Page B

But
that didn't mean he gave up the reins. Not Walter Wilson
Mulholland."
    Not a man who'd spent his whole life
dictating. Not a man whose only communication with his grandson had
come in the form of orders. Sit erect. Take your elbows off the
table. Straighten your shoulders. Wear a shirt and tie for dinner
at my table.
    Not the man who bad talked in front of Paul
as if he didn't exist. The boy needs a haircut. The boy needs
discipline. James, if you and Nancy won't send him away to school,
at least stop babying the boy.
    Paul propped his elbows on the table and
picked up his wine glass, concentrating on the feel of its smooth,
warm surface between his palms.
    "He named Dad head of the firm in his place
and ordered us to move into the big house on the lake where Mom had
been brought up. She didn't want to go, either."
    He remembered sitting on the stairs of the
little suburban house he'd been born in, out of sight, listening to
his parents.
    Jim, we have a home here.
    We'll make a home there, honey.
    I don't want to go back to that house, Jim.
Don't you see what's happening?
    Shh, there's nothing to cry about, honey.
This is a great move up for us.
    "But Walter Mulholland said it was more
appropriate for our new standing in the community. And nobody
disobeyed him." Certainly not James Monroe. "Big, dark furniture
and drapes that looked petrified. The only noise was the hall
clock. God, I hated it."
    His own vehemence discomfited him.
    Without looking at Bette, he produced a
deprecating grin. "I guess I missed our old place. The
neighborhood, my friends."
    He remembered the tidy little house not far
from the railroad tracks. His mother had baked cookies and helped
him grow a tomato patch each summer. His father had taken the train
into the city every day, and home every night.
    "We used to play baseball together, Dad and
I. He'd been a pro. He had a tough time growing up. His folks were
really poor, and baseball was his only real fun. He got through
college on baseball scholarships and he started law school during
off-seasons from the minors. He loves the game."
    In the drawn-out twilights of summer, his
father had coached the Little League team or they'd just thrown the
ball back and forth, an endless pendulum connecting father and son.
He could still feel the lung-bursting pride at his pals' awe that
James Monroe had been a pro baseball player, a gifted fielder who'd
reached the highest level of minor leagues and come this close to
being in the majors.
    Until he married Nancy Mulholland and went to
work in Walter Mulholland's law firm.
    "He still has his glove," he told Bette,
turning his wine glass around and around, "but when he took over
the firm, he didn't have time for that sort of thing anymore. And
Mom was busy with Judi and the move and the new house. I was a
little at loose ends. When Walter Mulholland returned for his
version of a state visit late that summer, it all came to a
head."
    Paul consciously eased the muscles in his
shoulder.
    "Walter Wilson Mulholland never bought the
theory about letting people 'find themselves,' " he continued. He
listened to himself critically. light irony, that was the
appropriate tone. "He knew what everyone should do with his life
and how to achieve it—and he didn't mince words saying so."
    "That can be a sign of caring," said Bette.
"That someone wants only the best for the people he loves."
    "Maybe." He conceded the point because he
didn't want to have to consider how little he believed it. "But
with him it was more force of habit. He was born and bred to be a
despot." He saw the quick frown that pleated Bette's brows.
Sympathy? Or disapproval? Not liking either possibility, he forged
on. "When he started diagramming my life, I didn't care for the
grand design, so I ran away, complete with bedroll, clean underwear
and seven dollars and thirty-four cents."
    Two decades later he could still remember
dinner that night—a formal meal with several strangers joining them
at the big,