Strangewood Read Online Free PDF

she admitted. "He
just seems very distracted the past few days. I asked him if anything was
bothering him and he did say he was sad, but that's not too unusual in a child
of divorce."
    Thomas noticed that, unlike many other members of the clergy
he'd known, Sister Margaret didn't make the word "divorce" sound
filthy. He was grateful to her for that.
    "I suppose it's nothing," she said finally.
    "I'll have a talk with him," Thomas decided. "Thanks
for your concern, Sister."
    "He's a wonderful boy, with an extraordinary
imagination," Sister Margaret enthused. "I suppose that's not very
surprising for a child whose father created Strangewood, but it's still an
admirable quality."
    A sly grin stole across Thomas's face.
    "Did I say something funny, Mr. Randall?" Sister
Margaret asked, with feigned consternation.
    "I was just thinking about my tenure at St.
Bridget's," Thomas replied. "In the old days, the nuns would try to
stifle my imagination as much as possible. I was drawing and writing things
down all the time. They thought I was strange, a discipline problem, simply
because I wasn't as serious as the other kids."
    "That was the old school of thought," Sister
Margaret agreed. "These days, we encourage wild imaginations. The creative
impulse serves the child and perhaps, later, the world. It's a gift from
God."
    "Daddy, can we go now?" Nathan asked,
exasperated. The boy had stood off to one side when he'd finished clapping
erasers, but his admittedly limited patience had run out.
    "Sure, buddy," his father said. "Say good-bye
to Sister Margaret, and we'll go for that pizza I promised you."
    "Pepperoni?" Nathan cried.
    "You bet," Thomas answered.
    Nathan whooped, waved good-bye to Sister Margaret, and ran
for the passenger door of his father's Volvo. Thomas reached into his pocket
and retrieved the keys. He depressed the tiny button on his keychain which
deactivated the car's alarm system, and called a thank you to the nun even as
she disappeared back into the school.
    Thomas opened his door, instructed Nathan to put on his seat
belt, and took another look at the school before sliding into his own seat. It
was an old building, faded granite and cement. He'd always thought it tediously
boring. But for the first time, he noticed an elegant simplicity to the school,
to the name carved above the door and the crucifix that hung there.
    The parking lot was also the playground, where he and his
classmates took recess all those years ago. With the sound of the breeze
rustling the leaves of the mighty oaks that still stood at the edge of the lot,
and the warm late-afternoon sun beating down on the tar, and the birdsong so
familiar as to almost disappear . . . it took him back. Just for a moment.
    He wanted desperately for Nathan to have all the pleasure
he'd had in those years. All of it, and more.
    "So, how you doing, Nathan?" he asked as he
started up the Volvo.
    The boy didn't respond.
    "Nathan?" Thomas prodded, as he glanced both ways
on Broadway before turning left and heading south toward Ardsley.
    Still no answer.
    Thomas glanced over to see that Nathan was staring intently
at a spot about his own eye level, next to him on the seat, whispering almost
imperceptibly.
    Ah , Thomas thought. Crabapple.
     

CHAPTER 2
     
    Thomas "TJ" Randall was an army brat. His father
had been transferred often enough — from Massachusetts to Texas,
California to Virginia — that he and his older sister, Tricia, never
spent more that two years in the same school. At least not until their father
died, and even then, not for some years. Eventually, Ruth Randall had moved her
children back to her hometown of North Tarrytown, New York. Thomas was in the
seventh grade at the time.
    Since then, it had been the only place he'd ever thought of
as home.
    His mother died a month before his college graduation, and
Tricia had long since moved to Los Angeles, where she found work as a
production assistant for a small television production company. She had