Silverbridge Read Online Free PDF

the collection of silver-framed photographs that traveled with her wherever she went. Gail had set them on the round Regency-style table that was set to one side of the fireplace. Slowly Tracy approached the table and looked at the familiar faces that had been caught by the camera.
    There was a picture of her parents taken at their thirtieth wedding anniversary celebration. Her mother wore a long, smoke gray dress, her father wore a tux, and somehow they managed to look both dignified and exceedingly happy. There was a picture of her sister and brother-in-law with their two little sons, and a picture of Tracy holding their eldest, Matthew, in his long white christening gown.
    She looked for a while at each of these pictures before picking up the last one, a twelve-by-fourteen formal portrait of a bride and groom. She carried the picture with her to one of the Queen-Anne-style chairs in front of the fireplace, sat down, and regarded it gravely.
    We were so young, she thought, looking at her own radiant twenty-year-old face, so bright with happiness, so confident in the continuation of that happiness, so completely unaware that within three months the man who stood so proudly by her side would be dead.
    “Scotty,” she said out loud. “I still miss you.”
    He’ll remain this way forever, she thought: twenty-one years of age, just married to the girl he had known since third grade, poised on the brink of what everyone said would be a fabulous career in professional basketball.
    And then with the crash of metal on the highway and the screaming of ambulances in the night, it had been over. Scott Collins, recently married number-two pick in the NBA draft, was dead. A tractor trailer truck had gone out of control and smashed into his new sports car, and not even the seat belt he had been wearing, not the deploying airbag, had been able to save him from the explosion of fire that had engulfed his car.
    Seven years had passed since that dreadful night, and instead of being a wife, a mother and a teacher, as Tracy had planned, she was an actress. A movie star.
    It had all happened so quickly. She had not been able to face going back to the University of Connecticut, where she would have been a senior and where Scotty had played college ball. There were too many memories. Then Scotty’s agent had suggested she might like a small part in a movie shooting in New York, and she had thought something so alien would be a good distraction. She would spend a few months doing something totally different, then she would go back and finish her degree.
    What am I doing here?
    Scotty’s light gray eyes smiled at her from the picture she held in her lap. He had been dead for seven years, and she no longer mourned for him, but there had never been anyone to fill his place.
    “I like Jon Melbourne,” she told her dead husband. “He has a great voice.”
    You’ve always been a sucker for an English accent. She could almost hear the amusement in Scotty’s voice as she imagined his reply.
    She smiled. “I have been.” She lifted the picture to her lips and kissed the young man’s face. “But I’ll bet he has a lousy jump shot.”
    A flash of pain shot through her head, from the left side of her neck to her left eye, and Tracy stiffened. Oh God. It can’t be coming back. Please don’t let it come back. I have to work this afternoon. She closed her eyes and began to do yoga breathing. In and out. In and out. Just concentrate on the breath. In and out. You 're going to be fine. Relax. In and out.
    After ten minutes she cautiously opened her eyes once more. The pain in her head was gone. I think it’s going to be all right. She stood up carefully, as if she were balancing a water jug on her head, and went to return Scotty’s picture to the Regency table.

 
     
     
     
    4
     
     
    T he shoot was scheduled to go for as long as the light stayed good, but Tracy was finished by five- thirty. Dave called her name as she was walking off, and