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Chapters (22)
  1. Cover Page
  2. TITLE PAGE
  3. DEDICATION
  4. PART I
  5. CHAPTER ONE
  6. CHAPTER TWO
  7. CHAPTER THREE
  8. CHAPTER FOUR
  9. CHAPTER FIVE
  10. CHAPTER SIX
  11. CHAPTER SEVEN
  12. CHAPTER EIGHT
  13. PART II
  14. CHAPTER NINE
  15. CHAPTER TEN
  16. CHAPTER ELEVEN
  17. CHAPTER TWELVE
  18. CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  19. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  20. A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  21. ALSO BY ELIZABETH HARTLEY WINTHROP
  22. COPYRIGHT

She is a mystic, and with her powers, she will make Maggie well.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

ELEVEN

Sunday

I

At six thirty Wilson finally allows himself to get up. He has been awake most of the night, or semi-awake, in that restless place between sleeping and wakefulness where thought and dream merge. He gets out of bed as quietly as he can and begins to dress in the light by the window. It is still too early to tell whether the gray outside portends the day to come or it’s leftover from the night and waiting to be colored by the sun. He looks from his robe to his corduroys. At home on a Sunday morning he would put his robe on, but here he’s more inclined to dress completely, the way you would in someone else’s house. He frowns. Someone else’s house, he thinks to himself. Someone else. He is someone else, someone other than who he was when, young, he would wander these halls in a robe and slippers. He reaches for his corduroys.

Ruth lies curled on her side. She looks younger asleep, Wilson thinks. Her skin is smoother, her expression softer. She breathes quietly, long, deep breaths. He considers waking her to let her know that he is getting up; she won’t be happy to wake and find herself alone. But if he wakes her, he knows she’ll never fall back to sleep, and she looks at peace, for once, even if it’s an unconscious peace. He watches her body rise and fall. Quietly, he leaves the room.

It is cold in the hallway. The doors of the other bedrooms on this floor are closed, and, he imagines, the furniture is covered in sheets, as if this were a summer home put away for the winter. At the end of the hall is his mother’s old room. He pushes the door open and stands on the threshold. Even though she can manage stairs again, his mother has been living downstairs for a year now, since she broke her hip, but her old bedroom looks as if she lives there still; it is exactly as she left it. Old mail is stacked by the bed. A few shirts lie wrinkled on the chaise longue, and an old pair of sneakers sits beneath the dresser. There are photographs on the dresser, of Wilson’s father, of his brothers and their families, one of Ruth and Wilson on their wedding day. It is as if his mother plans to move back up here one day, even though the space she has created downstairs is similarly cluttered, similarly her own.