The Widow's Season Read Online Free PDF

With one turn of a knob, one jerk of the cord, he was off trimming around the porches. That was his nature, always in control.
    As the alcohol lingered on the back of Sarah’s tongue, goose bumps rose along her forearms. It was happening again—that unmistakable sense that David was there, watching her. Where was he this time? The bedroom window? The neighbor’s roof? The feeling was becoming so common it bordered on the ludicrous. For once, however, she felt a rare bravado. Perhaps it was the wine, or perhaps her growing resignation, but Sarah rose from the table, lifted her glass into the air, and spoke aloud: “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
    For a few seconds the yard remained absolutely quiet, even the mockingbirds pausing to listen. And then, from behind the burning bushes came the crunch of leaves. Someone was standing there, shifting his weight.
    Run, she told herself. Run into the house and lock the door. Run straight through the hall and out the front, down the street to Margaret. But the longer she waited, the more resolute she became. After all, what did she have to fear? David, the good doctor? Or did she fear her own death? No. The miscarriages had changed her attitude toward death. She didn’t fear it; she despised it. She hated how it had planted itself in her body, making her its walking vessel. Sometimes in her angriest moments she even hated God—what had she ever done to Him, to have cast so many shadows upon her life? With that thought she put down her wine, walked to the garden shed, and retrieved a hoe.
    She carried it to the face of the middle burning bush, six feet tall with leaves so thick she could not see beyond them. Carefully she inserted the handle of the hoe into the shrub like a giant thermometer until it hit the fence on the other side with a dull thud. She repeated the gesture four times, imagining a man on the other side, contorting his body to avoid the thrusts of her horticultural sword. At last she dropped the hoe, raised her hands, and inserted them into the bush, watching her fingers disappear into the red leaves.
    She had a vague idea of what she might touch. Something cold, something sharp, a set of teeth. She both dreaded and desired another pair of hands, to grab her own and pull her in. But all she felt was a mesh of branches. With a sudden jerk, she divided the bush to the left and right, and looked straight through to the fence beyond.
    There was another crunch of leaves, a blinding rush of wings, and when she opened her eyes she saw a pair of blue jays ascend into the darkening sky.

• 4 •
    Early the next morning, while the eastern horizon lingered in a predawn blue, Sarah woke to a slow tapping. In her dream David’s blue-white knuckles were rapping at the window, but when she sat up, the sound became liquid. Barefoot and dizzy, she slumped into the bathroom and discovered a wet towel dripping from the shower rod. Where had it come from, this foreign object? It hadn’t been there last night, of that she was certain, but when she pulled it from the rod and wrung it out into the tub, the action felt familiar.
    Back in her bedroom, she noticed that her windows were shut tight—she usually kept them open to the night air—and when she pressed her toes on the carpet beneath the windowsill, it was damp. A storm must have passed after midnight. She must have risen to shut windows and sop up puddles throughout the house. It was strange that she couldn’t remember, but the line between sleeping and waking had grown tenuous in recent weeks.
    Outside, the lawn glittered with frosted rain, carrying her mind back to the morning of David’s death. Then, too, a thunderstorm had emerged in the early hours, and she had trudged around the house with a towel, closing windows that faced north and west. David had been gone on an overnight kayaking trip. He had wanted to spend two days paddling the Shannon south through the Blue Ridge.
    She had driven him to his put-in