The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane Read Online Free PDF

person, the kind often masked in a defensive layer of irony and cynicism. Without admitting to herself what she was doing, Connie gradually stopped looking for someone else to take the dog.
    She never noticed that after Arlo entered her life, her nightmares about replicating vermin disappeared.
    Now she turned from the simmering kettle and found a note taped to the refrigerator, in Liz’s tidy printing. Grace called 6:00 P.M. , read the note. Said call back ASAP. Late OK.
    “Look at this, Arlo,” said Connie, gesturing to the note. “Your real owner called.”
    He tipped his head sideways.
    “Aw, how could I say such things?” She chided herself for him, stooping to rub his cheek. “No, of course not really. It’s just my mother.” She checked her watch—1:20 A.M. That would make it…11:20 in New Mexico. Connie smiled, pleased that her mother had remembered that today was her exam day. Of course Connie had taken the trouble to remind her a few times, in her otherwise sterile, if dutiful, letters and on her mother’s answering machine. But for once the reminders had worked.
    Connie poured the steaming water into a chipped mug, dropped a peppermint tea bag into the cup, and moved into the darkened study. She pulled the chain on the lamp that stood arced over her reading chair, a chintz behemoth that she had found yardsaleing in Cambridge.
    The study was simultaneously spare and cluttered, fitting for two studious women. One wall housed the fireplace, framed by oak bookshelvesoverflowing with paperbacks and textbooks. Near the fireplace sagged a futon, a remnant of Liz’s college life, facing a table positioned to support resting feet. Two institutional desks stood pressed to the walls on either side of the bookshelf, Connie’s a picture of order, Liz’s a riot of papers shuffled into heaps. The fourth wall consisted of tall leaded windows sheltering a small forest of potted plants and herbs for cooking—Connie’s garden. By the plants sat her lamp and reading chair, under which she just glimpsed the disappearing rump of Arlo.
    Connie pulled her knees up to her chest and balanced the hot mug under her nose. She rarely bothered to notice this room, as she spent so much of her time in it. Before too long, the day would come when she and Liz no longer shared this warren. The thought tugged at her excitedly, but under the excitement Connie felt distant, even sad. Of course, that day was still far off. Connie sipped at her tea, allowing its astringent taste to draw her back into the present.
    Even for her mother, 11:20 seemed a little late. But the note had said to call as soon as she could. In truth Connie was so pleased that Grace had remembered her exam that she wanted to call now, even if it meant waking her mother up. In fact, she was not sure when she had last spoken with her mother. Had it been around Christmas? Connie had stayed in Cambridge to read for her exam, and they chatted on Christmas Day. But they must have caught each other on the phone since then. Connie knew she left messages, but she could not quite recall when she had actually reached her. Was it…
    Connie placed two fingers on her forehead with a soft groan. It was when Grace had called to wish her a happy vernal equinox, the moment in spring when daylight and nighttime are exactly the same length. Of course. That was typical of Grace Goodwin.
    In her more petulant moments, when she was younger and angry, Connie used the epithet “a victim of the 1960s” for her mother. As she grew older, however, she began to regard her mother with a detached, almost anthropological interest. Now the phrase that Connie produced when pressedto describe Grace was “a free spirit.” It was hard to know where to start, when talking about Grace.
    Perhaps Connie preferred to avoid discussing her mother because her own origin characterized Grace’s fundamental lack of planning. Connie had been the unanticipated result of a love affair that Grace had had her