Holding Hands Read Online Free Page A

she’d read Scott’s email. Besides,
Caitlin was likely only one of many pretty undergraduate girls
who really needed
to see him and were willing to come whenever he wanted them
to.
    Don’t think about it, Meredith cautioned herself.
    Less than a minute later, the glowering sky
burst open, a deluge of rain slowing the traffic, and she couldn’t
think of anything but inching along the clogged highway, which
quickly wound up submerged beneath an inch of water. Raindrops
pounded the car’s roof, producing a hectic drumbeat, and she
switched her windshield wipers to high-speed.
    The clamor of the rain prompted Scott to
glance up from his laptop screen. “Where did all this traffic come
from?” he muttered.
    “ The rain is slowing things
down.”
    “ Yeah, but all these cars?
Why isn’t everyone driving to the mountains to look at the
leaves?”
    Maybe they’d all had the same idea as
Meredith. Maybe each car held a couple whose marriage was at risk
of unraveling, and they were all cruising to Cape Cod to mend the
fraying fabric of their love.
    “ This is why I hate the
Cape,” Scott continued, gesturing at the stream of red brake-lights
glowing ahead of them. “The back-ups are always a
nightmare.”
    “ You don’t hate the Cape.
You just hate the traffic,” Meredith argued. “And I’m driving.
Relax.”
    He sighed. “At this rate, we’ll be eating
dinner at midnight.”
    “ We’ll survive.”
    He turned his attention back to his computer.
The tapping of his fingers against the keys was drowned out by the
percussion of the rain splashing against the car and bubbling into
the puddles and rivulets washing the highway. The traffic crept.
The sky darkened from dismal to apocalyptic. After a while,
Meredith spotted the lights illuminating bridge that crossed the
Cape Cod Canal, a looming silhouette of steel girders in the
distance, black against the stormy purple sky. She opened her mouth
to point out to Scott that they were making progress, but when she
glanced at him he was scowling at his laptop screen, engrossed in
his work. She remained silent.
    It took another forty-five minutes to travel
from where she’d first seen the bridge until her car finally rolled
onto it.
    More rain on the other side. Harder,
wind-whipped rain. The weather forecast on last night’s local news
had predicted a storm out in the ocean that might nip the eastern
end of the cape. Evidently the meteorologist had tracked it wrong.
It had engulfed the entire cape, and it was no mere nip. It was a
huge, gluttonous chomp.
    The dashboard clock read 8:30.
    Due to the storm, the traffic continued to
ooze along, slower than sludge. She sat unmoving for fifteen
minutes while the vehicles in front of her eased around a small
scrub pine that the wind had knocked over and deposited onto the
road. Through it all, Scott’s attention remained on his laptop, his
face barely illuminated by the glow from the monitor.
    She was tired. Driving in such wretched
weather wore her out, and the rhythmic clicking of the windshield
wipers was giving her a headache. But she wouldn’t complain. This
getaway had been her idea, after all.
    Scott probably didn’t even think their
marriage was in trouble. If he did, he probably didn’t care. But
she cared, and that was why they were here right now, crawling
along the flooded Mid-Cape Highway, heading toward their marriage’s
salvation or doom.
    It was well past nine when she finally exited
the highway. Rain continued to descend from the sky at a rate that
made her think about building an ark and rounding up some animals.
She hydroplaned a few times on the route south, slowed her speed,
veered around fallen branches. Given the storm’s intensity, she
assured herself, it would likely blow out to sea soon. Tomorrow
would be a better day.
    On Route 28, she cleared her throat. “It’s
nearly ten o’clock,” she told Scott. “Do you want me to stop at a
McDonald’s?”
    He squinted at the dashboard clock