Until She Comes Home Read Online Free PDF

inside and sit in front of the fan. Your heart, she would tell him. The strain is no good for your heart. Continuing to shout, Orin shuffles up and down the sidewalk, dragging his tan suede shoes. Blue trousers pool at his ankles. As he walks, he leans on a three-foot-long scrap of wood as if it were a cane. James helped Orin replace the joists on his back porch last summer. The wood must be a leftover. Lifting the wood and stabbing it toward the apartments, Orin shouts again, “Good money says that’s the place to look.”
    The men point to each side of the simple two-story brick apartment building, seemingly most worried about the shrubs and overgrown grass that run along the west side. Around back, they’ll find a thick stand of poplars hugging a narrow stream that runs east to west. The sun has set but the sky still glows with the last of its light. They’ll want to get a good look before darkness settles in. For the past year, these neighbors have been talking, some louder than others. More than being afraid of the coloreds living in the apartments, they are afraid of one buying and moving into a house, because that would be a lasting change and their lives would never be good again, never be the same. They have to stick together. If one falls, they all fall. That’s what the loudest neighbors say. Pointing this way and that, the men, a half dozen at least, split into two groups and flank the apartment building, disappearing around back for a time, reappearing in front.
    “What’d you find?” Orin shouts, waving one fist in the air.
    The men hold up their hands. Nothing. Most of the apartment windows are dark. The doors remain closed. No one from the Filmore comes out.
    “You’ve got to go on in there.” It’s Orin again. “Nothing’s going to stop you.”
    And then the police arrive, two black-and-white cars, two officers in each. They tell the men to stay clear of the Filmore.
    “No one is allowed in there,” an officer says.
    Leaving the group of six to linger on the curb, Orin Schofield still shouting and wielding his plank of wood, James escorts the officers into Mr. Symanski’s house. They sit around the kitchen table, and it takes him and Grace some time to explain about Elizabeth.
    “No, she’s not a child,” Grace says. “A woman. Twenty-one years old. No, twenty-two today. But she’s like a child. She’s lost all the same. I saw her last. She left my house. Walked home. It’s such a short trip. That’s the last I know.”
    The police insist Mr. Symanski stay at the house and not join the other men. James agrees.
    “She’ll need a friendly face when we bring her home,” James says.
    “Yes,” Grace says, resting a hand on Mr. Symanski’s shoulder. “James will see to it. He’ll see Elizabeth home.”
    But really James must worry about Mr. Symanski’s heart. He won’t let Grace join the search either.
    “See to him,” James says, nodding at Mr. Symanski. “Put on some coffee. Answer the phone. And keep yourself in the house.”
    So while James goes outside to show the officers his map, Grace hunts for the coffee. She dumps the old grounds in a can she finds under the sink, rinses and fills the pot, brews a fresh batch. In the refrigerator, she finds a loaf of bread, cheese, and the sliced roast beef she delivered this past Wednesday. Like Orin Schofield, Mr. Symanski always gets the same dish. Spreading extra butter on the sandwich, she cuts it in half and slides it toward him.
    “How long since you last ate?” she asks.
    Mr. Symanski looks at the small white refrigerator as if it might give him the answer. “I am not knowing,” he says, then picks up one half of the sandwich but doesn’t take a bite.
    Not worried that coffee will keep Mr. Symanski awake tonight, Grace pours him a cup. No one will sleep until Elizabeth is home. She adds cream and two sugars because that’s the way James takes it, and presses one of Mr. Symanski’s hands between both of hers. Perhaps Mr.