Sleepwalk Read Online Free PDF

into it. There was an immense four-poster bed, and in the tower itself, a cushion-filled love seat and a large easy chair. Five windows were set into the curving wall of the tower, and the view, framed by a pair of cottonwoods, was a panorama of desert and mesas, with the town no more than a small collection of buildings in the foreground.
    “You can see almost fifty miles from up here,” Rita told her, reading her thoughts. “Of course, it would be even lovelier without the town and the refinery, but without those we wouldn’t be here at all, would we?” She lifted one of the suitcases onto the bed and snapped it open. “Let’s get you unpacked. By then Max should be home and we can all have a gin and tonic.”
    Judith firmly closed the suitcase. “I have an even better idea,” she said. “Let’s leave the unpacking for later, and you and I can have something right now. It’s been a long drive.”
    Long, she thought as she followed Rita back downstairs, but worth it. All her doubts were now gone.
    She was glad to be home.
    Stretched out on a chaise under one of the cottonwoods, sipping slowly at her second drink, Judith felt a sense of ease and comfort she hadn’t experienced for years. Rita had filled her in on most of the news of the last decade, what there was of it. Many of the kids she’d grown up with were still here, married now, most with at least one child. Laura Sanders, to whom she’d promised to write but never had, had come back five years ago, graduating from nursing school and taking a job at Borrego High.
    The one piece of news that had truly upset her was Rita’s recounting of the death of Alice Arnold four years ago.
    “How did Jed take it?” Judith asked. In her mind she pictured the little boy—only five or six when she’d last seen him—with his Kokatí mother’s dark skin and jet-black hair, and his father’s brilliant blue eyes. She remembered Jed as a happy child, interested in everything he saw, full of questions, always eager to go exploring in the canyon or up on the mesa. Judith had baby-sat for him many times, once or twice taking care of him all weekend while Frank took Alice away, hoping to break her strange melancholy with trips to Santa Fe, or up into the Utah canyon lands. Judith had loved those weekends, taking care of Jed, riding up into the canyon with him perched on the saddle in front of her, or up to the mesa to visit his grandfather in Kokatí. Jed, hisbright eyes darting everywhere, talking constantly, asking questions, urging her onward to explore.
    To have lost his mother, when he was still only eleven …
    “It was hard for him,” she heard Rita saying. “It was Jed who found her. He came home from school one day, and there she was …” Rita’s voice trailed off, and both the women were silent for a moment.
    “How is he now?” Judith asked. “It’s such a terrible thing for a child that age.”
    “It’s hard to say,” Rita replied. “In so many ways he’s so much like his mother. I’m afraid there’s a part of him no one will ever know. It’s almost as if he’s closed part of himself down.” Her eyes met Judith’s. “It’s very difficult for him, you know, being half Indian out here.”
    “But not as difficult as it must have been for Alice, trying to live in Borrego after growing up in Kokatí. After she married Frank, her father barely spoke to her.”
    “I know,” Rita sighed. “In their own way, the Indians can be every bit as prejudiced as we are.”
    They talked on for a while, and finally Judith turned to a subject she’d been avoiding—the reason she was back in Borrego.
    “What about Mrs. Tucker?” she asked. “How is she?”
    Again, as when Judith had asked about Max, a troubled cloud passed over Rita Moreland’s eyes, but this time it didn’t pass. “I think maybe you should save that question for Greg,” she began.
    “Greg?” Judith exclaimed. “You mean Greg is here too?”
    Rita stared at her. “You mean