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

who would go on to graduate school, who might actually become a poet.
    The most promising was a girl named Anne Harringon, who was applying for a semester at Oxford, as Evelyn had long ago. “Just avoid Gregory Lambert!” she said while they were discussing the recommendation Anne had asked her to write. “ ‘Fanciful nonsense,’ that’s what he called my poetry, back then.”
    “What a jerk!” said Anne. “I’ll definitely avoid him. Professor Thorne told me to take Hilary Margrave for Victorian literature and Emmet Dowson for poetry. They sure have weird names at Oxford, don’t they?”
    “I’m glad you talked to Professor Thorne,” she said. “He knows more about Oxford than I do.”
    “Yeah, he was really helpful. My sister told me to take his Chaucer class. She was here when his wife died.”
    “His wife?” said Evelyn. She’d been leafing through the recommendation forms, but now she sat very still.
    “Yeah, she fell off a horse or something. Do you think I have the right stamps?”
    “I don’t know. You’ll have to check with the post office.” Evelyn felt as though she’d been hit in the stomach. Brendan had never told her he’d been married.
    “Well, I really appreciate it, Professor Morgan. I like Professor Thorne’s class, but yours is my favorite. Your exams aren’t as hard.”
    “Um, thanks.” She couldn’t concentrate. Why hadn’t he told her? It must have happened here at Bartlett.
    “Hey, Professor? Thanks a lot. I’ll see you on Friday!”
    “What? Sure, Anne. I’ll see you in class.” After Anne left, Evelyn sat at her desk, staring at the stack of midterms. Thanksgiving was a week away. She’d been planning to ask Brendan to go to Boston with her to meet her parents. She hadn’t been sure how they would respond to him—another college professor? But she’d wanted him to see her family.
    “Evelyn? Are you done for the day?” There he was, looking perfectly ordinary, smiling at her from the doorway. Brown hair swept back from his forehead, the hair she loved to run her fingers through, the shoulders she loved to lean against, listening to his heartbeat.
    “Why didn’t you tell me about your wife?”
    He stood silent. Then he said, “All right. Come on, let’s go.”
    “Where?” she asked.
    “Just come on, all right?” There was something wrong, something terribly wrong. She could see it in his face. He turned, and she followed him down the hallway and into the parking lot, almost running to keep up. They got into his car. And then they drove. And drove.
    “Where are we going?” she asked once.
    “To see my wife,” he said. She wanted to ask what he meant, but his face was so grim, so filled with pain, that she just sat there, miserable, wishing she hadn’t said anything.
    They pulled up in front of the Henrico County Medical Center. At the front desk, the nurse said, “It’s past visiting hours, Dr. Thorne.”
    “Please,” he said. “Can I go in just for a minute?”
    “Oh, all right. Just for a minute.” She looked curiously at Evelyn, as though wondering who she was.
    Evelyn followed him down a hallway painted what was probably supposed to be a calming shade of pink, with a sign that said LONG-TERM CARE and an arrow pointed in the direction they were heading.
    He opened a door, entered a room with two patients in it, and walked up to one of the beds. “There she is,” he said. “There’s Isabel.”
    Evelyn looked down at the bed. The woman lying on it must have been beautiful once. She had very pale skin and black hair that had been cut short. There were tubes going into her arms, a band around her head with a monitor attached. A machine helped her breathe.
    “It happened about three years ago,” he said. “She was riding a horse, and it threw her. She’d grown up riding horses, but this was a stallion right off the racetrack. She was trying to tame him. The stable called an ambulance, but by the time it reached the hospital, she was in