Frame 232 Read Online Free

at the suggestion of such unprofessionalism   —precisely the reaction Margaret was hoping for. “I wouldn’t look at a customer’s film, ma’am,” he explained, with patience colored ever so slightly by prideful irritation.
    Back home, Margaret made a point of securing the front door not just with the dead bolt but also with the chain. She didn’t expect Ronnie to arrive home from work for a fewhours, but if he came early for any reason, she’d be alerted when he had to ring the bell. She would explain that a salesman had come earlier in the day, so she had decided to put the chain on before opening the door and had neglected to remove it.
    She went into the basement pantry, unfolded the stepladder, and slid one of the ceiling tiles aside. She had chosen the pantry because it was dark and cool   —ideal for film storage. She never removed the reel from its flat yellow box, nor the box from its brown paper bag. She simply set the whole package up there, then moved the tile back into place. At no point did she feel the need to put the film on the projector they kept in the hall closet upstairs. Seeing John Kennedy murdered once was more than enough.
    After refolding the ladder and wiping the dust from her hands, she whispered a little prayer that she would not have to take the film out of its hiding place for any reason.
    And the Lord would grant this request . . . for a time.

    April 1976
    Margaret opened the basement door and felt around for the light switch. This simple action was not as easy as it had once been, as her diminishing vision made depth perception difficult. Also, abrupt shifts from light to dark gave her instant headaches, often compounding the chronic migraines that already arrived, unannounced, several days a week. Bright sunlight, which she had loved as a child, was the worst. One look into a clear sky at high noon sent knife blades into her eyes.
    She found the switch and flicked it, shielding her face like a frightened animal. Compromised vision and paralyzingmigraines weren’t the only manifestations of the hypertension that had become a relentless presence in her life. In spite of being only forty-one, she had acquired obvious streaks of gray in the thick wave of brown hair that had once shimmered with such radiance it earned the envy of many of her girlfriends. And her face, which had retained much of its youthful clarity well into adulthood, now bore the first lines, blemishes, and discolorations that commonly flow in the wake of unyielding anxiety.
    She took the steps cautiously. There was a faintly electric uncertainty to all her movements these days, resulting in a clumsiness previously unknown to her. She had already slipped and gone down this staircase three times, once resulting in a badly sprained ankle and a chipped bone in her right elbow.
    When she reached the bottom, she crossed through the laundry area and went into the pantry. She did not turn on the bulb in here; there was enough light slanting through the ground-level window set high in the corner. Summoning all her willpower, she took the stepladder from its hooks and unfolded it, setting it beneath the ceiling tile in question.
    She sat down on the ladder and took a pack of Parliaments from the breast pocket of her blouse, which was fashionable for the times but fairly wrinkled. Ron didn’t care much for the smoking habit she’d acquired a few years back. She told him she had smoked in college   —therefore it wasn’t really a new habit   —and that she only indulged occasionally. She was pretty sure he knew she was lying on all counts, even if he didn’t say as much.
    She fumbled with the lighter, eventually got the cigarette going, and reveled in the curling threads of bluish gray. Her thoughts inevitably followed those threads upward, settlingon that accursed tile and the even more accursed package that waited behind it.
    She was struck again by the fact that there was actually a point along the timeline when