Skylight Confessions Read Online Free PDF Page B

I'm afraid of,"
    Arlyn told him.
    "Okay." George just stood there. The dog jumped up and barked, but George didn't seem to notice.
    Arlyn got out of the car. She felt ridiculously young and foolish.
    She hadn't even brought the groceries home before she went to Pennyroyal Lane; she'd just driven around as though she were looking for something and couldn't quite recall what, until she found herself on his street. By the time she did get home, half of what she'd bought at the grocery was ruined; the milk and the cottage cheese and the sherbet had leaked through their containers. But George had been right. He made a great apple pie.
    He listened to her when she talked. He fixed her a cup of tea. He did all those things, but it was Arlyn who kissed him. She was the one who started it all, and once she had, she couldn't stop.
    Sometimes Arlie would go to his house on Pennyroyal Lane, but she was afraid of getting caught. More often she drove out to meet George at a public landing at the beach while Sam was at school.
    She never let it interfere with Sam; never let her affair with George affect Sam in any way. It was her secret life, but it felt realer than her life with John ever had.
    George's collie loved nothing more than to run at the beach.
    They'd chase the seagulls away, running and shouting, then George would throw stones into the sea.
    "I'm afraid of stones," Arlyn admitted. She didn't want things to break and fall apart any sooner than they had to. She thought of the stones on her father's night table from the time he'd almost drowned. She thought of the house she lived in now, made of a thousand windows.
    "Afraid of a stone?" George had laughed. "If you ask me, it makes more sense to be afraid of an apple pie."
    George had the blondest hair Arlyn had ever seen and brown eyes. His family had lived in town for two hundred years; everybody knew him. For a while, he had left window washing to start a pet store, but he was too kindhearted. He gave away birdseed and hamster food at half price, he was bad at figures, and the business had failed. Reopening the pet store was his dream, but George had a practical nature. He did what needed to be done. He was a man who fulfilled his responsibilities, and his brother had asked him to come back to the family business. That was why he was up on her roof the day Arlie met him, working at a job he hated, although Arlyn secretly believed it was fate that had put him there. Her true fate, the one that had gotten misplaced on the night John Moody got lost, the future she was meant to have, and did have now, at least for a few hours a week.
    When Arlyn went to the dry cleaner or to the post office, when she went anywhere at all, she felt like standing up and shouting, I'm in love with George Snow. Everyone most likely would have cheered — George was well thought of. Good for you! they would have said. Excellent fellow. Much better than that son of a bitch you're with. Now you can right what's wrong in your life!
    She couldn't stay away from George. When they made love in the back of his truck, or at his house on Pennyroyal Lane, Arlyn couldn't help wondering if he was one of those Connecticut people in her father's stories who had unexpected powers. But she knew that such people always waited until the last moment, until the ship was going down or the building was burning, before they revealed themselves and flew away. Whether or not they could bring anyone with them was impossible to know until that dire moment when there was no other choice but flight.
    Although Arlie had never imagined herself to be the sort of woman who had an affair, lying was easier than she'd thought it would be. She would say she was going to the market, the post office, a neighbor's, the library. Simple, really. She brought along a clothes brush so none of George's collie's long hair would stick to her slacks or her skirts and give her away. Not that John was looking for evidence of her betrayals; most of the