The Last Will of Moira Leahy Read Online Free PDF

stomach sank.
    “Your mother, she was going to call. She just doesn’t want to travel right now, and—”
    “But it’s not right now! It’s a month from now!”
    “We hoped you’d come here for Christmas this year. Come home. We’d love to see you.”
    “Dad, you haven’t been here since graduation, and Mom’s never been to Betheny at all!” I’d never forget the look on President Stephenson’s face when he’d asked to meet my mother at graduation and I’d told him she couldn’t make it. His expression had transformed from respect into something I detested. Her twenty-two-year-old daughter finishes a PhD program in record time, graduates with honors, is offered a position with the university, and she doesn’t show up? He pitied me. And it made me work that much harder—even now, nearly three years later.
    I knew it was no use arguing or even pleading with my father. She would never come to me.
    “If you don’t want to drive, we can buy you a plane ticket,” he said. “It’ll cut your time in half.”
    “It’s not that, Dad.”
    “Then drive, daughter. Get in the car and be with us. If not today, then for Christmas. Come home.”
    I shook my head, thinking of cranes and outstretched necks and chopped ones and Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner all at once, my mind a cornucopia of disjointed imagery. “I can’t,” I said.
    He seemed to be similarly incapable of carrying on. “Well. We’ll miss you, Mayfly. Good talking. I’ll tell your mother.”
    I knew sleep wouldn’t come again, but I stayed beneath my blankets for an hour anyway. I studied my room: the folded clothes, books stacked on my dresser, organized alphabetically. Neglect showed only in the slender mirror on the back of the door, dust-coated where there weren’t course curricula taped to the glass. I rose and approached it as one might a sleeping giant, then lifted a single sheet and looked beneath. Wary eyes regarded me before I let the paper drop.
    In the kitchen, I started coffee and pulled a carton of eggs from my refrigerator, along with some vegetables. I cross-sectioned a zucchini, then began slicing. Half-moon wedges puddled before me, as the noises started again.
    “Leave me the hell alone,” I said to my own head. Like a crazy person after all.
    I SPENT THE day babying a small turkey and half a dozen side dishes. Finally, Kit called.
    “It’s a rarity,” she said. “There’s a pregnant woman here with two uteruses. Surgery’s soon. I have to stay.”
    “Are you kidding? Where will you eat? The cafeteria?”
    “It’s not so bad, really. You could always …”
    She let the thought trail off, as if realizing how dismal it was to eat Thanksgiving dinner—by choice—in a hospital.
    “I’ll bring a plate for you,” I said.
    “Aww, thanks. But I don’t know how long this will go, and—”
    “They’re taking advantage of you. You work too hard.”
    “Pot calling kettle! Come in, kettle!”
    “Whatever. Eat when you get home, all right?”
    I hung up and poured myself a full glass of wine, sat by Sam on the couch. “Just you and me, bud.” I took a gulp and stroked his fur. “Merry Thanksgiving.” He snored faintly. “Sure, but you’ll be wide awake when the turkey’s finished.”
    I looked at the paperwork on my desk. I needed to plan the international outreach course I’d test online next summer. That’s what I should do. But my eyes turned back, snagged on the keris I’d left abandoned on the table. I could still conjure the scent from that red scrap of silk, even over that of a roasted holiday. I touched the sheath and felt a tickle of heat. Maybe it was warm because of the meteoric metals I’d read about. Was that plausible? There had to be more to the keris than what I’d learned in that book.
    I thought of Noel, touring European castles and museums, searching for dusty treasures and digging into a more personal kind of ancient history.
    It’d been a long time since I’d had any sort of