Saving Max Read Online Free PDF Page A

must reflect her dismay. Now it is Marianne who reaches over to pat Danielle’s hand. “It’s not so bad. We all have our trials and joys.”
    “I just want you to know how much I admire you,” says Danielle. “You seem so strong and…balanced.”
    “You’re stronger than you think.” She flashes her brilliant smile. “And we’re going to be great friends—I can tell.”
    Danielle smiles back. Maybe she’s right. Maybe she does need a friend.

CHAPTER FIVE
    Danielle looks up. Marianne catches her eye and smiles. They sit in companionable silence in a secluded area of the Fountainview unit called the “family room”—a misnomer if Danielle’s ever heard one. It is, however, the only place where they have any privacy and can avoid the daily traffic of nurses and patients going to and from their rooms. It is the only hideaway where they can pretend that everything is normal. Danielle closes her laptop for a moment. She is seriously behind in e-mailing a draft brief to E. Bartlett Monahan, her senior partner and the bane of her existence. He is the head litigation partner and a member of the management committee—one of the firm’s five powerhouses who rule them all. “King Prick,” as he is referred to by the associates, is forty-eight, a bachelor and a not-so-secret misogynist. E. Bartlett, as he insists on being called, doesn’t believe that women have the balls to be litigators, much less partners. Women are secretaries, mothers, other men’s wives and—when the urge strikes—to be slept with and discarded.
    He has not taken kindly to her absence—not that she expected a whit of understanding from him. He has no experience with kids—and he certainly has no clue about special-needs children.
    She rubs her eyes and takes in the scene. Marianne sits across from her, knitting what appears to be something complicated, while Jonas holds a ball of yarn, which he bounces in hishands. He mutters and shakes his head in that odd, rhythmic way that Danielle has come to recognize as his attempt to communicate. Marianne, dressed in a perfectly creased white pantsuit and silk scarf, appears not to notice Jonas’s machinations as she calmly knits and purls. Danielle has always avoided engaging in the domestic arts. Her experience has been that professional women cannot risk being perceived as weak or too feminine in any way—at least not litigators. Danielle has always secretly looked down upon women who stayed home as inferior in both position and choice. As she watches Marianne and Jonas and sees the love and devotion that binds them, she feels herself color and repents.
    She certainly can’t claim that she has been the best parent in the world if Marianne is the benchmark. Unlike her, Danielle never contemplated quitting her career to take care of Max—not that she had the choice. The money had to come from somewhere. Still. She turns and takes in the sight of Max, pale and sprawled across the sofa next to her, sound asleep. Anyone looking at the two of them would probably only see the distance between them. Seeing him this way tears at her heart and gives way to the crushing panic she has felt since they came here. What is wrong with her child?
    Her cell phone vibrates. Maitland does not permit the use of cell phones—probably to keep the schizophrenics from believing they’re on the line with God, she thinks. Sighing, she takes her phone, laptop and purse and walks out of the unit. She plops down on a white cement bench far enough out of sight so that Max can’t see her through the window as she shakes a cigarette from the pack. She lights it; inhales deliciously; and touches the iPhone’s various Apple icons to access her recent calls. Shit. E. Bartlett’s secretary. Another touch of the screen. A nasal voice announces that her brief is expectedno later than tomorrow morning. She groans. Another late night downing hotel-coffee dregs.
    She takes in the brilliant sunshine and vibrant blue sky. She