Rag and Bone Read Online Free PDF

more than ten years, and of the hundreds of people I’d met, only a few had stuck. Many of them were at my house when I arrived home. They had cleaned my house, filled it with flowers and, as I later discovered, stocked my freezer with casseroles. They were waiting for me in the living room, which they had decorated with streamers and balloons and a WELCOME HOME HENRY! sign strung across the doorway. On the dining room table, amid bowls and platters of food, was a chocolate cake in the shape of a heart.
    “I can’t believe this,” I said.
    Elena said, “It was Edith’s idea.”
    Edith Rosen bustled toward me, a small, plump, gray-haired woman of sixty, a psychologist whom I had met while working on a case involving the drug and alcohol rehab where she had worked. She currently worked for the county’s Department of Mental Health Services, providing therapy to all those crack babies of the late 1980s and early ’90s who were now on the verge of adolescence with problems that started at attention deficit disorder and got worse from there.
    “Sweetie,” she said, hugging me. The top of her head came to my neck, her frizzy hair tickling me. She stepped back, assessing my appearance. From the sudden dampening of her eyes, it was clear she did not like what she saw, but she made a joke. “There was a lot of discussion about whether to shout surprise when you came through the door. I’m glad we didn’t.” She led me into the room. “Come and sit. We won’t stay long, you probably need to rest.”
    “I’ve done nothing but rest,” I said.
    I eased into an armchair and looked around the room at all my friends. One of them murmured, “Speech,” but I shook my head, too moved to speak.
    The party broke up early, and one by one as they were leaving, my friends came up to say a few words of affection and encouragement. Edith, who had been cleaning up, came last.
    “Thank you for doing this,” I told her.
    She tried to smile, but her eyes glistened. “You’re much too young to have come so close to dying.”
    “The doc says if I follow his orders I’ll have pretty much the usual life span.”
    “Well, just in case,” she said. “Take this.” She handed me a leather loop. A pendant hung on it, a dark red stone, smoothed and polished and cut into the shape of a heart.
    “What is it?”
    “The stone’s called red jasper.”
    I slipped the loop over my neck, tucked it into my shirt. The stone was warm against my flesh. “Thank you.”
    “It’s a spare, Henry. Don’t lose it.” She grinned. “Well, maybe to the right man.”
    Elena had volunteered to stay with me for a little while until she was sure I was all right. I was awakened early the next morning by the urgent murmur of her voice talking on the phone. I pulled myself out of bed and fumbled around in the closet for my bathrobe. There was a quick knock at the door and then she came in. Her expression stopped me in my tracks, the robe hanging limply over one arm.
    “What happened?” I asked.
    “I’ve got to fly home,” she said. “I’ve talked to Edith. She’ll come by this afternoon to look in on you.”
    “Is it Joanne?”
    She shook her head. “It’s my daughter. Vicky. She turned up black and blue at our doorstep last night, with her son, begging for help.”
    “Help for what?” I said after a long moment, still befuddled by sleep.
    “Her husband beat her,” she said. “She told Joanne she had been in a shelter for battered women, but they’d asked her to leave and she didn’t have anywhere else to go where he wouldn’t find her.”
    “How did she find you?”
    “I don’t know,” she said. “The social worker from the hospital must have given Vicky my address after all.”
    “That was years ago. How can you be sure it’s her, Elena?”
    She answered impatiently, “I can’t until I get home.” Then, relenting, “I’m sorry, Henry. This has taken me completely by surprise.” She half-smiled. “The other day in the