I'll Be Seeing You Read Online Free Page A

a comforting steadiness in the authority with which he would lead them on the dance floor or tuck a hand under their elbow on an icy evening.
    Mac had always known he would be a doctor someday. By the time he began his studies at NYU medical school he had begun to believe that the future of medicine was in genetics. Now thirty-six, he worked at LifeCode, a genetic research laboratory in Westport, some fifty minutes southeast of Newtown.
    It was the job he wanted, and it fit into his life as a divorced, custodial father. At twenty-seven Mac had married. The marriage lasted a year and a half and produced Kyle. Then one day Mac came home from the lab to find a babysitter and a note. It read: “Mac, this isn’t for me. I’m a lousy wife and a lousy mother. We both know it can’t work. I’ve got to have a crack at a career. Take good care of Kyle. Goodbye, Ginger.”
    Ginger had done pretty well for herself since then. She sang in cabarets in Vegas and on cruise ships. She’d cut a few records, and the last one had hit the charts. She sent Kyle expensive presents for his birthday and Christmas. The gifts were invariably too sophisticated or too babyish. She’d seen Kyle only three times in the seven years since she’d taken off.
    Despite the fact that it had almost come as a relief, Mac still harbored residual bitterness over Ginger’s desertion. Somehow, divorce had never been a part of his imagined future, and he still felt uncomfortable with it. He knew that his son missed having a mother, so he took special care and special pride in being a good, attentive father.
    On Friday evenings, Mac and Kyle often had dinner at the Drumdoe Inn. They ate in the small, informal grill, where the special Friday menu included individual pizzas and fish and chips.
    Catherine was always at the inn for the dinner hour. Growing up, Meg had been a fixture there too. When she was ten and Mac a nineteen-year-old busboy, she had wistfully told him that it was fun to eat at home. “Daddy and I do sometimes, when he’s here.”
    Since her father’s disappearance, Meg spent just about every weekend at home and joined her mother at the inn for dinner. But this Friday night there was no sign of either Catherine or Meg.
    Mac acknowledged that he was disappointed, but Kyle, who always looked forward especially to seeing Meg, dismissed her absence. “So she’s not here. Fine.”
    â€œFine” was Kyle’s new all-purpose word. He used it when he was enthusiastic, disgusted or being cool. Tonight, Mac wasn’t quite sure what emotion he was hearing. But hey, he told himself, give the kid space. If something’s really bothering him it’ll come cut sooner or later, and it certainly can’t have anything to do with Meghan.
    Kyle finished the last of the pizza in silence. He was mad at Meghan. She always acted like she really was interested in the stuff that he did, but Wednesday afternoon, when he was outside and had just taught his dog, Jake, to stand up on his hind legs and beg, Meghan had driven past and ignored him. She’d been going real slow, too, and he’d yelled to her to stop. He knew she’d seen him, because she’d looked right at him. But then she’d speeded up the car, driven off, and hadn’t even taken time to see Jake’s trick. Fine.
    He wouldn’t tell his dad about it. Dad would say that Meghan was just upset because Mr. Collins hadn’t come home for a long time and might have been one of the people whose car went into the river off the bridge. He’d say that sometimes when people were thinking about something else, they could go right past people and noteven see them. But Meg
had
seen Kyle Wednesday and hadn’t even bothered to wave to him.
    Fine, he thought. Just fine.
7
    W hen Meghan arrived home she found her mother sitting in the darkened living room, her hands folded in her lap. “Mom, are you okay?” she