The Unwanted Read Online Free PDF

alone that make Ed ride him so hard. Perhaps, she sometimesthought, if Eric had looked more like his dad, Ed wouldn’t have needed to mold him quite so strictly.
    Suddenly her husband’s angry voice intruded on her reverie.
    “It’s ten after six, Laura. Can’t you ever have dinner ready on time?”
    Laura jumped at his voice, then hurriedly bent to open the oven. “I’ll start serving right away,” she promised. “H-how was your day? Did everything go all right? Did you get the engine fixed?”
    Ed glared at her, his attention already drifting back to the sports page open in front of him. “If it went badly, I’d tell you, right? And no, I didn’t get the engine fixed. I had to spend most of the afternoon with the wholesaler, trying to soften him up to give me a decent price on the catch.”
    Which means you sat in the Whaler’s Inn, drinking all afternoon, Laura thought as she began placing the ribs onto the three plates on the counter.
    Silently she carried the plates into the dining room. Then, just as she was about to call upstairs to Eric, he appeared in the doorway that separated the dining room from the kitchen.
    “Mom?” he asked, his voice low enough so that Laura knew he didn’t want his father to hear. “Can you talk to Dad? He wants me to go practice batting with him tonight, but I have to study.”
    Laura stood still. Her eyes met her son’s. She could read the fear in them, and the shame he was feeling at asking for her help. She hesitated, then almost in spite of herself, shook her head.
    “I can’t,” she said quietly. “If he’s made up his mind, I can’t change it. You know that.”
    For a moment something flickered in Eric’s eyes, then it was gone. “Yeah,” he said finally. “Yeah, I know. Well, don’t worry, Mom. It’ll be all right—I’ll figure something out.”
    A moment later Ed Cavanaugh came in and took his place at the head of the table. He waited silently until his wife and son had seated themselves. His eyes surveyed the dinner in front of him, then came to rest on them.
    “I guess I can’t complain,” he said, his voice oozing with a stinging slime of vicious sarcasm. “A crappy house, a lazyson, and a wife who can’t cook. What more could anyone want?”
    Eric’s eyes flashed with anger as his mother winced at the lash of the words, but neither of them answered him, each silently hoping that when Ed started shouting, the neighbors wouldn’t hear him. But of course, they would—they always did—and though none of them ever said much, Laura and Eric always knew what they were thinking.
    Eric always did his best simply to act as if nothing had happened, but for Laura the pitiful looks she always got from the neighbors—particularly from Rosemary Winslow—were almost as painful as her husband’s blows.

C
hapter
2
    “If you don’t get started, you won’t make it,” Rosemary Winslow said, her eyes flicking to the clock on the wall. It was already after nine, but Keith didn’t seem the least bit worried. As she watched, he poured himself another cup of coffee and neatly folded
The Boston Globe
to the sports page. “Keith! Didn’t you hear me? This is not a fishing trip—you’re picking up your own daughter, and you can’t be late!”
    “I won’t be late,” Keith replied, setting the paper aside. “It’s Saturday—there won’t be that much traffic.” He heard the sound of a screen door slamming next door, and glanced out the window to see Ed Cavanaugh starting down his driveway, his eyes bleary, his footsteps dragging. He gestured toward the window with his head, at the same time grinning wickedly at his wife. “Bet Laura doesn’t nag
him
the way you nag me.”
    Rosemary’s eyes darkened as she remembered the sounds that had erupted from the Cavanaughs’ house late the night before. Though Ed’s yelling hadn’t been punctuated with any of Laura’s quickly stifled screams of pain, Rosemary was still certain the man had been slapping