Where Love Has Gone Read Online Free PDF Page B

dropping the bombs but not pulling back on the stick afterward, following them into the funnels of the warship and dying in the cool sea with it.
    Then there would be no Air Medal, no Silver Star, no Purple Heart. Maybe there would be a
    C.M.H. like they gave Colin Kelly, who had done the same thing a short while before. There would be no hospitals afterward, no hero’s tour, no bond drives, no publicity.
    Because then there would be no me and I wouldn’t be coming to San Francisco now as I came to San Francisco then. For I would be dead and I never would have met Nora and Danielle would never have been born.
    Almost twenty years. And maybe even that would not have been enough. I was so young then. I was tired. I closed my eyes for a moment.
    Please, God, give me back the time.
    PARTTWO

    The Part of the Book
    About NORA

    1

    __________________________________________

    It is trite, but it is true. Time lends perspective. When you are trapped in the emotions of the present, you cannot really see because you are like a leaf driven before the autumn winds by the demons that possess you. Time dulls and sometimes kills the demons of love and hatred leaving only the tiniest thread of its memory so that you can peek through the keyhole to the past and see much that you could not see before. I looked down from the window as the plane swung wide across the city to enter its landing pattern. I saw the lights of the city and the string of pearls that was its bridges and suddenly I realized that the pain and fear that had been mine at the thought of returning no longer existed. They lay dead in the past with the other demons that had possessed me.
    At that moment I knew why Elizabeth had insisted that I come and I was grateful to her. She had chosen this way to exorcise my devils, so that I could once again be my own man, free of my guilts and tortures.
    The reporters were there with their cameras but they were as tired as I at that early hour of the morning. After a few minutes they let me go. I promised them a full statement later in the day.
    I went over to Hertz and rented the cheapest car they had, then drove into the city to a new motel they’d built on Van Ness, just across the street from Tommy’s Joynt . The room was small but comfortable in that antiseptic style that motels go in for.
    I picked up the telephone and called Elizabeth. When I heard her voice, warm from our bed, as she told the operator I was not at home. I wanted to thank her. But the connection was broken before I could utter a word.
    The morning was at the windows and I went over and looked out. North toward the hills in the gray mists I could see the tower of the Mark Hopkins rising to the sky. I tried to see beyond, a few blocks to the west, to a familiar white façade and an Italian blue stone roof. The house where I used to live. The house where, even now, Nora was probably sleeping. Sleeping in that strange dream-like peculiar world all her own.

    From somewhere far off in the fog of dulled sleep, the telephone was ringing. Nora heard it and didn’t hear it. She didn’t want to. She pushed her face deeper into the pillow and her hands pressed it tighter against her ears. But the telephone still kept ringing.
    “Rick! Answer it!” And the thought woke her. Because Rick was dead.
    She rolled over and stared balefully at the instrument. Now its ringing came from far away and all she heard was the soft peal of the chimes that had been installed on her bedroom extension. Still
    she made no move to answer it.
    After a moment the chimes stopped and again the house was quiet. She sat up and reached out for a cigarette. The sedative the doctor had given her the night before still pounded dully in her head. She lit the cigarette and drew in deeply.
    There was a click as the house interphone came on, bringing the voice of her butler. “Are you awake, Miss Hayden?”
    “Yes,” she answered, without moving from the bed. “Your mother is on the