Promises Read Online Free PDF

exploring markets. Last year, I think we saw every Chinese food store in San Francisco. Adam knows fruits and vegetables that I never knew existed either. His computer and his exotic recipes are his two loves.”
    “What’s this about two loves? I have three,” asked Adam as the troop came carrying balls and mallets.
    “Megan, Danny, and me. Mostly me!” cried Julie.
    She was ten and, like her older sister, was almost a copy of Adam even to her thin, straight nose.
    “But our team won the game,” Danny said. “Me and Nina. We beat them, didn’t we, Nina?”
    “Yes, and we’ll do it again,” said Nina, ruffling the curly red hair that Danny naturally hated.
    The children adored Nina, and not merely because she adored them; she possessed a charm that could not help but attract anyone. The headstrong child had become a confident young woman, filled with a vivid enthusiasm. And to some extent Margaret had to credit herself, because she was the one who had argued against Adam that Nina must be allowed to make her own choices, to go her own way.
    “I hear,” said Louise, “that you’re a big success in New York.”
    “ ‘A big success’? No, but with a little luck I hope to be. Anyway, I’m feeling better about myself than I would be feeling now if I hadn’t left college after the first year. I’d have graduated last month with a B.A., a smattering of history and English literature, and nowhere to go, nothing to do with myself.”
    “You make it sound awfully bleak,” Adam said. “AB.A. from a good college has no value in your estimation?”
    “For most people I’m sure it has. I was never a student. You know that. You’re not comparing me with Margaret, I hope.” Nina turned suddenly to Margaret. “Sometimes I think I must have been a disappointment to you. All those nights when you pulled me through chemistry and math! Right up there,” she said, pointing to the window above, “at my desk next to that window. And you were never impatient, you never made me feel ashamed.”
    “There was never any reason to be ashamed. Not then, and surely not now. You were you, and I’m glad you’re doing what you wanted to do.”
    With a particular tenderness different from that which she felt for her children—who had a mother and father of their own—she met Nina’s clear gaze. Such a sprightly young thing she was in her short yellow dress!
    “I just wish New York wasn’t so far away,” murmured Margaret. She had not meant to say it; the thought had simply escaped into speech.
    “I know. But it’s wonderful! Every day you can choose from a hundred things to see or hear. I guess I’m just not a small-town person,” Nina said, adding quickly, “not that Elmsford is exactly a small town.”
    Louise urged, “Tell us what’s been happening to you.”
    “Well, after I finished that course in design, I had to look for a job, of course—”
    “But tell what happened before that, at the school,” Margaret prompted.
    “Yes, at the school we had a contest, to plan a room. I was assigned a boy’s room, a boy about eight, so ofcourse I thought of you, Danny, and since I know what you like, I had a head start.” Nina concluded modestly, “And so, I won.”
    “Don’t be modest,” said Gilbert. “We’re only family. Go on.”
    “Well, somebody wrote an article about the winners, so when I went job hunting, I brought the clipping with me, and after the third try I got a job. That’s about it.”
    “You started at the top,” Margaret reminded her. “Crozier and Dexter. Whenever I pick up a decoration and art magazine at the hairdresser’s, I see their name.”
    “Oh, they’re the top, all right,” Nina admitted. “I guess I have to say it was a coup, a lucky coup for me. I’m learning so much from them! They even let me help a bit, green as I am, with the room they’re doing in the Farnsworth Settlement’s model house benefit. That’s the most important annual showhouse in the city. It