The Thorn and the Blossom: A Two-Sided Love Story Read Online Free PDF Page A

certainly have written back to you, Evelyn.”
    “Then, you weren’t angry?” she asked. It was the first time theyhad referred to the incident, and she wasn’t quite sure what to say about it. Should she explain about the hallucinations?
    “I could never be angry with you.” He reached across the table and took her hand. It was all right. She wouldn’t have to say anything. After all, it had been more than ten years. Dr. Birnbaum had assured her that, as she grew older, the hallucinations would go away. And they finally had. She didn’t want Brendan to think he was getting involved with a woman who had mental problems. If he even was getting involved; she still wasn’t sure. Although, he was holding her hand. If she decided that she should tell him, eventually … well, then she would. But it didn’t have to be tonight, did it? There was plenty of time.
    After dinner, they drove to the Museum of Fine Arts. They wandered through the galleries, looking at the Tiffany lamps and second-rate Sargents. They stopped in the gift shop, and he bought her a notebook with a picture of John Waterhouse’s
The Lady of Shalott
reproduced on the cover. “For your poetry,” he said. She smiled and squeezed his hand, then thought,
What am I, fifteen?
But that’s how he made her feel.
    They drove back to Coleville in silence. He walked her to the front porch and said, “Evelyn, is it safe to kiss you? I’ve been holding off, you know. Worried you would run away again.”
    It was the first reference he’d made to what had happened in Clews so long ago.
    “I’m not going to run away,” she said. “I promise.” He looked particularly handsome under the porch light, with his hands in his jacket pockets. It was October, already starting to get cold.
    “All right.” He smiled, put his hand on her cheek—how well she remembered that gesture—and leaned down. His kiss was soft,tentative and then, when he realized that this time she wasn’t going to run away, passionate, insistent.
    “Do you want to come in?” she said, breathless.
    “Yes, I want to come in. Most definitely.” He followed her up the stairs, and she realized what she had never seen before, that her bedroom looked exactly like the one at the Giant’s Head. Why had she bought those white pillowcases, that white coverlet overfilled with goose feathers? That small table and the painting of a fishing boat?
    “Evelyn,” he murmured, his lips in her hair. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do this.” She felt his mouth on her neck and then moving down to her shoulders, his fingers unbuttoning and then pulling off the blouse she had so carefully chosen as attractive but not too sexy, because she hadn’t wanted to seem
too
eager. Although she wasn’t thinking about that now, didn’t care what he thought, just wanted it to continue. So this was what it felt like to be made love to. She had never experienced this—not with college boyfriends, not with David, not with the few dates since David that had ended back at her apartment in New York. Brendan touched her with a combination of passion and expertise that she had never imagined existed. It was as though his fingers knew exactly where to go, where to find the secret places of her body, how to tease and caress her so that she cried out in surprised pleasure, wondering at the revelation. Afterward she slept, deeply and without dreams, curled up against his back. For the first time that she remembered, the world felt right, as it should be. As though everything were in its place.
    A fter that night, they were a couple, although not as far as the college was concerned.
    They never sat together at faculty meetings, never touched while they were on campus. It wasn’t something they had agreed to, but Evelyn had no desire to become the object of gossip, particularly among her students. She was starting to get to know them, especially the ones in her poetry workshop. She was starting to get a sense for