The Park at Sunrise Read Online Free PDF Page A

memories that Jason had captured, this time with love instead of anger as my guide.
    The other was smaller. A sheet of sketch paper was taped to it, with Jason's illegible scrawl filling the whole thing. Silly that, to bring a smile to my face. Paul's writing was big and loopy, filled with curlicues and lovely to look at. Mine was tiny, neat, and precise. Jason's would have done a doctor proud.
    I picked up the package and read the note, no greeting, just a flow of words:
    I've been in limbo for nine years. You wanted to know why I painted it? Because I was angry. Angry that Paul died and angry that his death cost me you. I blamed him for many years. Then I blamed myself. If I'd been a better a man, done something differently, you'd have come home to me. But when I painted that, the portrait of us in the park—I blamed you. It was your choice, always. To leave, to return. I wanted to remind you of what you'd left behind, because I wanted to move on, out of this gray hell of emotional limbo I've been stuck in all these years.
    It didn't work the way I planned it though. Painting the picture reminded me. And that picture led to this one. Look at them both, Morgan. And as always, it's your choice.
    My choice? I guess it always had been. But paintings played no part in my decision, and I refused to open either of these packages without Jason by my side. I'd made my decision staring at a photo on my cell phone in the park. God, was it just yesterday morning?
    I picked up both packages and laid them gently on the sofa in the room Jason's mom jokingly referred to as the "front parlor." They could wait. Folding the note, I shoved it into the back pocket of my Levis and tugged on the despised wool cap. Leather jacket, Black Fly glasses, and a scarf I swiped from the pegs by the door, and I was off to beat the sunrise to the park.

Chapter Six

I had two options for where to find Jason, and the scarcity of information hurt. There was a time when I'd have known which coffee house to cruise, which restaurant, which dusty bookstore. Now, if I didn't find him in the park, which I seriously hoped for, I would have to somehow find his gallery. If he wasn't in either of those places, I'd be forced to check old hangouts from our college days.
    The roads were fortunately cleared, and driving this morning wasn't as dangerous a proposition as it had been during the storm. I made it to the park as the sun climbed above the tree line and rushed down the same sidewalk I'd crossed just yesterday. The paths were snow-covered, and no one had passed this way before me. Still, I had to tread forward and make sure. If he was here, he'd be on that bench, I knew it in my heart. It would be the perfect place to close this chapter of our lives. My palms were damp with nervous sweat in the warm gloves, and my breath came in visible puffs in the morning cold.
    The bench was fairly secluded, so I had to walk quite a distance to prove that Jason wasn't there. That left the gallery, the location of which I was ignorant.
    Breathing deeply of the crisp mountain air, I stiffened my spine from its dispirited slump and turned around. There used to be a coffee shop that we hung out at on the corner. I could head over there, get a cup of coffee, if they took my debit card, and rifle through a phone book.
    Typically, I didn't consider how sitting in that particular coffee shop would feel. I should have gone to the Starbucks across the street. Too many nights we'd spent in this coffee shop with Jason and Paul both ripping apart movies, books, professors, talking dreams, sharing everything, while I scribbled out formulas and solutions to equations on the backs of napkins and receipts. On many a Saturday night or afternoon, we'd staked out the front bow window, where today the same raggedy reject of a love seat sat wedged against a low coffee table. Our books and backpacks had overflowed the nook, and we'd sink into our own little world until the weary baristas turned us out