Where Are You Now? Read Online Free PDF

pleasantly. Mom, lovely in a pale blue silk shirt and matching slacks, became animated and smiling, far more than I had seen her for years. It was as though coming to terms with Mack’s situation was giving her peace.
    Elliott’s mood brightened as he watched her. Growing up, I used to wonder if Elliott wore a shirt and tie to bed. He is always terribly formal, but when Mom turns on the charm, he simply melts. He’s a few years older than Mom, which makes me wonder if his head of charcoal brown hair can possibly be natural, but I think it may be. He carries himself with the erect posture of a career military officer. His expression is usually reserved, even aloof until he smiles or laughs, and then his whole appearance lightens up, and you can catch a glimpse of a more spontaneous person hiding behind his ingrained formality.
    He jokes about himself. “My father, Franklin Delano Wallace, was named after his distant cousin, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who remained Father’s hero. Why do you think my name is Elliott? That was the name the president chose for one of his sons. And despite all he did for the common man, remember thatRoosevelt was first and foremost an aristocrat. I’m afraid my father was not only an aristocrat but a downright snob. So when I come across too stuffy, blame it on the stuffed shirt who raised me.”
    By the time we finished coffee, I had decided that I absolutely would not even hint to Elliott that I was going to actively search for Mack. I offered to stay at Mom’s apartment while she was away, a fact that pleased her. She isn’t impressed with the studio in Greenwich Village that I rented last September when I started my clerkship with the judge. She certainly didn’t know that my reason for staying at Sutton Place was to be available if Mack learned that I was still looking for him and tried to reach me there.
    Outside the restaurant I hailed a cab. Elliott and Mom chose to walk to Sutton Place. As the cab pulled away, I watched with mixed feelings as Elliott took Mom’s arm, and, their shoulders brushing, they went down the street together.

8

    S ixty-seven-year-old retired surgeon Dr. David Andrews did not know why he had felt so uneasy after putting his daughter back on the train to Manhattan where she was completing her junior year at NYU.
    Leesey and her older brother, Gregg, had come up to Greenwich to be with him on Mother’s Day, a tough day for all of them, only the second one without Helen. The three of them had visited her grave in St. Mary’s cemetery, then gone out for an early dinner at the club.
    Leesey had planned to drive back to the city with Gregg, but at the last minute decided to stay overnight and go back in the morning. “My first class is eleven o’clock,” she had explained, “and I feel like hanging around with you, Dad.”
    Sunday evening, they had gone through some of the photograph albums and talked about Helen. “I miss her so much,” Leesey had whispered.
    â€œMe, too, honey,” he had confided.
    But Monday morning when he dropped her at the station, Leesey had been her usual bubbly self, which waswhy David Andrews could not understand the gnawing sense of worry that undermined his golf game both Monday and Tuesday.
    On Tuesday evening, he turned on the 6:30 news and was dozing in front of the television when the phone rang. It was Kate Carlisle, Leesey’s best friend, with whom she shared an apartment in Greenwich Village. Her question, and the troubled voice in which she asked it, caused him to bolt up from the easy chair.
    â€œDr. Andrews, is Leesey there?”
    â€œNo, she isn’t, Kate. Why would she be here?” he asked.
    As he spoke he glanced around the room. Even though he had sold the big house after Helen’s death, and she’d never been in this condo, when the phone rang, he instinctively looked around for her, her hand outstretched to take