Watching Amanda Read Online Free PDF Page B

back yard.
    Katherine had loved trees. She’d been studying horticulture.
    â€œYeah, that’s true,” Nick said, getting to his feet. He picked up the toaster and looked at it with reverence, then headed for the door.
    â€œThose Pop Tarts are for you,” Ethan told him.
    Nick smiled and chomped on one pastry and put the other in his jacket pocket .
    â€œLook, Nick, I’m not sure when I’ll be back. But if you need me, you call my cell phone, okay?”
    Nick nodded. “I think I’m gonna be okay, though. I don’t know, I just feel different. It’s weird.”
    Ethan smiled. “Take care.”
    He watched the boy run through the falling snow toward home, the toaster in his arms.
    It was time for Ethan to go home too. But for very different reasons.

CHAPTER 4
    At least ten times, Amanda had picked up the phone and put it back down again, undecided whether she should call her sisters to offer condolences for the loss of their father.
    This is insane, she thought each time she put down the phone. How had their relationship come to this?
    Because we have no relationship. We’ve never had a relationship.
    In the end, Amanda decided to wait until the reading of the will, where she could speak to Olivia and Ivy in person. That would be warmer than a phone call anyway, she rationalized.
    â€œHey, that’s not rationalizing,” Jenny assured her when she arrived with a black pants suit draped over her arm. “It’s the truth.” She nuzzled Tommy with her nose. “Hi sweetie-pie! Guess who’s going to babysit you while Mommy goes to the city! That’s right! Auntie Jenny.”
    Amanda blew Jenny a kiss and disappeared into her bedroom with the pants suit Jenny was letting her borrow for the occasion. With a closet full of “mom clothes,” Amanda didn’t have much to choose from.
    She tried the little leopard-print scarf Jenny had brought over, but it was both too trendy for her and seemed too whimsical for the occasion. Amanda put on the diamond stud earrings her mother had left her and her one pair of nice black pumps.
    â€œYou’ll be fine,” Jenny assured her when Amanda came into the living room. “Just remember that no matter what, you have Tommy. Okay? He’ll keep you focused on what’s important.”
    Amanda smiled and nodded and squeezed her friend’s hand, giving Tommy one last kiss on the forehead before putting on her black wool coat and heading out.
    She walked to the subway on the corner, trying not to think too much, and in the train station she bought a newspaper to keep her mind occupied. As the train rumbled into the station, she thought about turning around, dashing back upstairs and into her apartment building, but then the doors to the train opened and she made herself get on.
    She flipped through the newspaper, unable to concentrate. She read her horoscope, which promised good news today, and then Tommy’s, which assured strange news.
    Why am I reading this? she asked herself, folding the paper and staring out the darkened windows of the train. Just breathe and remember what Jenny said: No matter what happens, you always have Tommy.
    Forty minutes later, Amanda stood in front of the skyscraper office building in which Harris, Pinker and Swift was located.
    This was it, she thought. In more ways than one.
    She headed to the elevator bank and waited, then rode up to the nineteenth floor, and didn’t feel the slightest fluttering of butterflies until the doors slid open and she stepped out. At the end of the carpeted hallway were two glass doors and a huge gold sign engraved with the firm’s name.
    She pulled the ornate gold handle and stepped inside, and she suddenly felt lightheaded. She felt as though she’d stepped over a threshold and that her life wouldn’t be the same after today.
    â€œJust head right through that door,” the receptionist told Amanda, pointing at a