The Girl in the Glass Read Online Free PDF Page A

couldn’t meet. And shouldn’t have to. But if you don’t love him, Meg, you shouldn’t marry him. And that’s what you’re telling me, right? You don’t love him?”
    I took just a moment before answering, to reassess the reason I’d just called off my wedding. “I don’t miss him when he’s away. Shouldn’t I miss him when he’s on a business trip? Don’t you miss Tom when he’s not here?”
    Kara reached out to squeeze my hand. “Like my heart is missing from my body.”
    I winced now at the memory of those words and drained my tea to wash it away.
    I had done the right thing.
    I stepped back inside the cottage and set my cup on the kitchen counter next to files I had brought home from work. The printed pages of Sofia Borelli’s first two chapters peeked out of the Manila folder I put them in just before leaving. I had originally thought maybe I’d read the chapters before dinner. I stared at the folder now, though not truly seeing it, my thoughts in a jumble. Alex, on the oval throw rug by the back door, stretched and blinked, acknowledging my presence with a closed-mouth murmur. Then he curled back into a wheel of fur and closed his eyes.
    I grabbed my keys and purse and left.
    A cerulean twilight was falling across the coast as I maneuvered my car up North Torrey Pines Road toward the Melting Pot.
    As I waited at the traffic light by the university, I pondered whether or not I should tell my mother that Dad seemed deeply troubled about something. Maybe I should wait until I knew what it was and if he even wanted my mother to know.
    The light turned green, and I turned onto La Jolla Village Drive. A cascade of crimson taillights glimmered on the boulevard as it spread downward toward the interstate and the rest of upper La Jolla. As I joined the display of gleaming lights, I had the uncanny feeling that everything was about to change.

My father never knew his parents. He was born Paolo Orsini, the first and only son, a few months after his father’s sudden death. When his mother remarried, as young titled women do, she left behind my father and his older sister. His mother died not long after her second marriage. An uncle, a cardinal my father barely knew, saw to his unbending upbringing as a future duke.
    Sometimes I comfort myself with this knowledge of where he came from. When I think of the life my father knew before he became a man, I can imagine why I seldom saw him smile.
    Anguish is a tutor, just as privilege is.

5

    I handed my keys to the parking valet at the Melting Pot and pulled my linen jacket around my shoulders. A chilling breeze had cooled the air, and I couldn’t remember if I had closed the bathroom window. I laughed as I considered how my mother would react if I’d said that out loud and in her hearing. We’d be in the car and headed back to the cottage to make sure. An open window didn’t just let chilly air inside; it also provided access for a would-be burglar. Never mind that the window was only big enough for a six-year-old to fit through. A resourceful robber could easily finagle a six-year-old into crawling through the window and opening the front door for him for five bucks. Not that he would , but that he could , and that made all the difference. She’d be unable to enjoy her fondue until I had made sure the window was closed.
    Mom had become cautious after the divorce—about everything. And I guess I became a dreamer. There had been this secure life that I knew, where I lived in a house near my nonna and her Florentine echoes, where I had a mom and a dad, and custody was a word only policemen used. After the divorce I liked to dream about my old, safe life, and my mother liked to protect her new one. In that one tiny way, we were the same. At some point I stopped dreaming, but she never seemed to drop her caution. She wore it comfortably like a favorite hairstyle.
    My mother’s cautious life has kept her looking young; she eats sensibly, watches her weight, wears