When the Wind Blows Read Online Free PDF Page A

horsehair upholstery of the Victorian sofa. “It feels funny.”
    “When I was a little girl,” Diana said, “I used to slide right off it. And I thought it was lumpy,” she added, dropping her voice to a conspiratorial level. Christie poked at the sofa, then nodded.
    “It is.”
    “Would you like to see the rest of the house?”
    Christie hesitated, then nodded silently and stood up. Diana got to her feet, unsure where to begin. Finally she led Christie into the parlor, where there was another fireplace, two chairs, and an old-fashioned square piano.
    “I never saw a piano like that,” Christie said. She reached out and pressed a key. A tinny note emerged from the antique instrument.
    “It’s a Bosendorfer,” Diana explained. “One of my ancestors brought it out from Boston. Do you know how to play?”
    “A little,” Christie replied. “I took lessons before we came out here.”
    “Well, maybe I can teach you more,” Diana said. “Did you like your lessons?”
    “They were fun. But I’m not very good.”
    “Neither am I,” Diana admitted. “Maybe we can practice together.”
    “Who taught you?”
    “My mother,” Diana said. She drifted into silence for a moment. “But it wasn’t much fun,” she added.
    Christie looked at her curiously. “Why not?”
    Diana hesitated, then decided to change the subject. A sudden vision had come to her in the parlor, a vision of herself as a little girl, sitting on the hard piano bench, her mother standing over her, pounding out the rhythm with the cane she had already begun carrying, demanding that Diana play the notes exactly, criticizing the smallest mistakes, adding hours and hours to her daily practice sessions. She had hated the piano, and she hadn’t played in thirty years. But now she might try it again. In retrospect the discipline had been good for her and would be good for Christie, too. It might, indeed, be fun. But there was no reason to tell Christie what it had been like for her. No reason at all.
    They wandered through the day rooms on the main floor, and for the first time in years Diana saw her home through the eyes of a child. She had always taken the books that lined the walls of the library for granted, but as Christie stared at them, then ran her fingers over the leather-bound volumes, Diana found herself wanting to touch them, too.
    As a child, she had never been allowed in the library. It had been her father’s, and even though she had never known her father, she had learned very early to respect his things. Even now, as Christie took one of the volumes from the shelves and opened it, she had an urge to take the book from the child’s hand and put it back on the shelf. But it was, after all, only a book, and her father had been dead for half a century.
    “Do you like to read?” she asked.
    Christie nodded, turning the pages. It was a volume of bound copies of St. Nicholas magazine, filled with stories and drawings that appealed to her. “Did you read these when you were little?”
    “Oh, no,” Diana explained. “I had my own books, up in my nursery.”
    Christie cocked her head and looked up at Diana. “You had a nursery?”
    Again Diana’s mind drifted toward the past. “For years and years.”
    “Can I see it?” Christie asked.
    Diana felt her stomach tighten, and there was a ringing sensation in her ears. Why had she even mentioned the nursery? She hadn’t been in it herself since—since when? She couldn’t even remember, it had been so long ago. It had to be at least thirty years.
    Yes, that was how long it had been.
    She had been twenty, and she had been sick. She still vaguely remembered the illness. It had gone on for months, and for a while she had thought she was going to die. And then one morning she woke up, and she was no longer in the nursery.
    Instead she was in a room on the second floor—the “guest room,” though she couldn’t remember there ever having been a guest. From then on, that room had been