The Last Time I Saw Paris Read Online Free PDF Page A

company, Lara felt suddenly overwhelmed by what was happening in her life. She had always thought of herself as a young woman, but now a younger one had taken her place. She was bewildered by the fact that she was getting older and afraid to face the lurking possibility that she might have to get older without Bill.
    Throwing on her old robe, she walked to the window and stood looking at the powerful moonlit ocean, steel gray under silver gauze, doing the same thing it always did: surging in then flowing gently back out. Endlessly, infinitely. As it had long before she was born, and would long after she was gone. Somehow, there was no comfort in the sound of the ocean tonight.
    She thought of the first time she had met Bill. He was tall, lean, dark, and very attractive. He was already in medical school, and he lived next door. She had been a plump, frizzy-haired teenager, too shy even to speak, except for a brief “Hi” in passing. Anyhow, she considered him an older man, out of her league and out of her life.
    He was sitting on the porch steps outside his house and tears were rolling down his face. Lara had heard the news that his mother had just died. Bursting with compassion, she went to sit next to him. She took his hand and held it tightly. After a while he wiped away his tears. He looked into her eyes for a long moment, then he dropped a light kiss on her cheek. And was gone.
    They did not meet again until she was seventeen and going off to college at Northwestern and Bill was already an intern at Cook County. For Lara, it was love at second sight. They had dated, courted, almost made out in the back of her mother’s new Buick Riviera,but she had been too scared and he was a gentleman. They were married a week after she graduated.
    For years after that she had played the role of helpmate, working all day in a gloomy local newspaper office to pay the rent, staying up nights to help him study. She had cooked endless pots of spaghetti bolognaise, taken care of the bills, fended off the creditors, been there for him. And after that, she had played the role of mother to their two children, as well as the father role since Bill was away so much. But her life had been so full, so busy, so crammed with kids and traumas and being a couple at social events that she had not anticipated any changes.
    She stared at the silver ocean, thinking of Bill in Beijing with pretty, blond Melissa. She guessed proximity and a shared passion for their medical work had drawn them together, shutting her out of their charmed, clever, busy lives. How could she compete? What did she have to offer? Only a too-familiar body, a lifeline of memories, a lost world.
    Putting a hand to her throat, she touched the tiny diamond lover’s knot. Didn’t they say it represented the tie that binds? Is that what Bill had meant when he gave it to her? Sighing, she hoped so. Anyhow, she would not take it off until he got back home. She would wear it like a talisman, hoping it would bring him back to her.
    Dawn was breaking and she went downstairs and made herself a cup of Earl Grey tea—decaffeinated, though since she was already sleepless she didn’t know why she bothered. She carried the steaming mug of tea out onto the deck and leaned on the rail, watching the tide coming in with the dawn.
    She wondered what time it was in Beijing. Call theminute you arrive, she had told Bill, filled with that sudden anxiety about the flimsiness of airplanes, the vagaries of foreign weather, the reliability of air traffic control. Things she never even considered when she took a flight herself. Now, she wondered if he would remember.
    Her thoughts turned to the trip they had planned. She had suggested it months ago and she’d thought Bill had seemed pleased.
    Her honeymoon had been the most idyllic three weeks of her life, when innocence had been a state of mind, youth taken for granted, and every experience was fresh and new. They had flown to