Ten Days Read Online Free PDF Page A

oldest son: Change the diaper, offer the breast, roll him over, wrap him in his favorite blanket, unwrap him, rock him, sing to him. They had applied each comfort measure in turn until he finally settled down. Eddie—quiet, playful, congenitally satisfied—knew how to settle himself.
    “Mom.” Chris called for Anna as he traveled through several rooms upstairs. “Mom.” He was only three and still depended on Anna for so much. And, willingly, earnestly, she always complied. Chris stopped calling and yelled, “Lift me up.” The water ran and then stopped. Chris’s shoes slapped on the basement stairs, their clatter interrupted twice by his hacking cough.
    He skidded to a stop beside his father and held out his hands. Drops of water glistened on his knuckles, a streak of soap foam lined his right wrist.
    “Rub them on your pants.” Jake swiped his hands against his thighs. “Like this.”
    Chris mimicked his father.
    “Okay, buddy. That’s much better. Hand me a white tile.”

Chapter 3
    Rose Marie
     
     
     
     
     
    R ose Marie stepped out to the porch and closed the front door behind her. She didn’t want the chilly air in her living room. From the top of the stairs, she called to the little boy who sauntered down the driveway. “Chris, your blanket’s getting dirty.” The boy—the back pocket of his jeans bulging with the plastic egg he’d brought from home that morning—kept walking.
    “Pick it up, honey,” she called again.
    Without missing a step, Chris spooled the ragged blanket around his arm; the trailing edge fluttered an inch above the gravel. She watched as Anna opened the rear door of the car, hoisted Chris into his car seat, secured his seat belt, and then waved. Rose Marie couldn’t see the baby. He must be asleep in his infant seat beside Chris.
    Anna was sick, had stayed home from work that morning. “Could I bring Chris to your house this afternoon?” she had asked earlier on the phone, her voice muffled from her cold. “I’ll keep Eddie with me.”
    The mud-spattered Subaru rolled backward down the driveway, crawled up the street, and turned the corner. Chris was the last to leave for the day. All the children were finally gone, off to their real homes with their real mommies.
    She smiled at the thought of Chris chattering about his day to his mother in his high-octane, galloping way—lunch, nap, afternoon story, the cupcakes they decorated, the broken lightbulb, the lack of hot water.
    Halfway over the threshold into the living room, she stopped and backed up a step. The name plate was crooked, its letters heading downhill as if they might tumble onto the porch floor. Anna had painted it, a Christmas gift last year. A string of twisted branches and flower blossoms framed her last name, Lustov. She straightened the board. “Strange name,” she said out loud. Lustov was Roger’s name. She had accepted it as hers over forty years ago, but sometimes, especially since his death, it seemed foreign, as if it didn’t belong to her.
    She paused a moment longer to feel the fresh, spring breeze against her forehead, the rays from the setting sun against her cheeks. The rhythm of the day, a hectic throb that started with the morning greeting and ended with the afternoon parting, now slowed to a peaceful hum. She needed the quiet. It was hard work for a sixty-three-year-old woman to chase after young children from morning to night.
    Her house was toasty inside. She closed the front door against the chilly air, straightened the crumpled rag rug on the floor with her toe. Some days she wanted to quit this work, to escape to a warm, sunny place where pansies bloomed all winter and no one knew what a snow shovel was, a place where she could go on long walks every afternoon—year round—wearing a wrap no heavier than a sweater. Still, child care was a good job for her. She could work in her home, wear comfortable clothes, be her own boss. She’d learned a lot about kids when her girls