Shining Through Read Online Free PDF Page A

to the law firm but to government.
    Anytime a New Dealer decided to talk to a Republican, guess whose phone rang? And did he ever bring in business!
    I stood across the room from him, my back flat against the door. His secretary, Katherine from Vassar, had told me to go in, but not how far. His desk seemed half a city block away.
    “Come in,” he called. I began. The trek along his rug seemed forever. Each time I looked at Mr. Leland, he appeared just as far away; the rug was an eternal Persian stretch of dark red and blue. And the worst of it was not making my way across that vast space but knowing he was watching me. He made me a nervous wreck.
    At last I made it to his desk and stood before him. My left ankle wobbled, and I had a hideous picture of my leg giving way, and me crashing to the floor and trying to lift myself up 20 / SUSAN ISAACS
    by holding on to the edge of his desk, but instead pulling down his blotter and inkstand. “I’ve forgotten your name,” he said, interrupting my nightmare.
    “Linda Voss.” I was amazed I still had a voice.
    I made myself look straight at him. There were only two things right about his looks: his chin—tough, squared off—and his nose, an ordinary nose, although inappropriately upturned for such a man, daring to suggest that he’d once been a cute little boy.
    “Linda Voss. That’s right.” He paused. I snuck a fast peek around. Actually, his office wasn’t as big as I’d thought—nowhere near what you’d expect from such a big shot.
    To be equal to Edward Leland’s clout, though, the room would have had to be the size of Radio City Music Hall. But it was medium-sized, with the kind of seedy leather furniture you see in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes —lots of cracked old leather chairs with fat feet, and scratched tables. That was the point, of course, the rattiness of it. If he’d gotten nice new slip-covers, everybody would have thought he was an upstart.
    “Please sit down,” he said. No big deal, right? But just go into some lawyers’ offices to take a letter and they keep you standing for half an hour. Even if you fainted on the floor, they’d just keep dictating, as if they came out of the Gestapo, not Yale Law School. Mr. Leland not only said, “Please sit down,” he said,
    “Please sit down, Miss Voss.”
    Look, I knew he knew I wasn’t one of the executive secretaries, but he treated me as if I was. For someone like that, I’d take dictation till my fingers fell off. Because even though he was scary, you knew he was decent.
    Okay, the real truth? The decency, but mainly because Edward Leland was John Berringer’s father-in-law. And Gladys, who’d filled in a few months before when Kat from Vas was out with whooping cough, had told me about a picture of John and Nan—their wedding portrait—Mr. Leland kept on his desk. As I flipped open the pages of my pad, I noticed an oval silver frame angled so that if I leaned forward a little, I could get a glimpse.
    So I leaned forward.

    SHINING THROUGH / 21
    Nuts. In the frame was a picture of an old-fashioned-looking young woman. She was pretty, with hair that reached her shoulders and curled in little commas over the lace of her dress.
    Her neck was long, what they call swan-like, and she wore a locket. The picture must have been taken years and years ago…and then I realized. It was Mr. Leland’s late wife. Very late. She’d died from some terrible liver disease when Nan was two, nineteen years before.
    But where were John and Nan? I was dying to see the wedding gown. I’d imagined it as something airy and beautiful, like chiffon or tulle—the stuff gowns in fairy tales are made of. But then I thought, no, nothing airy for Nan. She’d wear satin, with a tight bodice and bell skirt, and everyone in church would whisper, Ooh, look how tiny her waist is!
    “Dear Herr, uh, Doktor Uhl,” Mr. Leland began. “Herr Doktor? You’ll do all that for me, Miss Voss? Keep the ‘herrs’ and the