In the Blood Read Online Free

She was tiny and powerful, like a ballerina, with dark hair pulled back into a tight bun. Her pale face was a spotlight and I felt the sear of her assessing gaze just briefly before she smiled. Unconsciously, my shoulders slouched a little, arching my body away from her gaze, as I am prone to do under too much scrutiny.
    “Lana.” She was breathless again, a woman always on the move. “I love that name. It’s so — romantic .”
    “Thank you,” I said. I hadn’t heard that before and it made me blush idiotically.
    “Rachel,” she said. She offered me her tiny hand in a hard and steely grip. “Rachel Kahn.”
    Did it sound familiar? I thought, not for the first time since she gave it. Every time I reached for it, it slipped away. I liked her name; one could do great things with a name like that: run companies, compete in triathlons, conquer nations. It was all hard sounds, three abrupt syllables. My name was all loops and whispers, the name of a dreamer, a procrastinator, someone who slept in. I bet Ms. Kahn was up no later than 5 A.M. , whether she had to be or not.
    She ushered me inside, apologizing for the unpacked boxes that stood in the hallway, next to the exquisite cream sectional, beneath the large Pollockesque oil which hung over the fireplace mantel and reached almost to the tall ceiling.
    “I thought I’d have accomplished more by now,” she said, lifting a veined hand to her forehead. She released a frustrated sigh. “But the days just seem to race by, don’t they?”
    Not my days, no. My days were long and winding, filled with big, empty blocks of time to fill with nothing but studies, books, films, pub crawls with my friends and roommates, weekend parties that lasted into the night, occasionally some Internet shopping. My days didn’t race by, not at all.
    “They do,” I said, just to be sociable. The best way not to call attention to yourself is to agree with what other people say. Even silence attracts attention.
    I followed her to a cavernous dining room and we sat at a long table fit for a king’s feast. It was one of those tables, the kind you see in design magazines and never anywhere else. It was basic, rustic even with the natural lines of the tree, and a surface with lots ofknots and eyes and shades of color. But I could tell just by the feel of it that it cost more than a car. A simple piece of black wood, lined with three perfect green apples, served as a tasteful centerpiece.
    From her crisp gray shift and her silver flats to the simple black-framed glasses she unfolded as slowly and carefully as one might a piece of origami, she exuded the kind of style that could not be bought. I slid my hastily cobbled-together résumé across to her. And while she looked it over I gazed around. Even in the disorder of unpacking, there was beauty. Even the dishrag folded by the sink looked like a gorgeous accident, coolness caught off guard.
    “So,” she said after a minute. “Do you have any child-care experience?”
    She placed her palm on the résumé, and pushed it away toward the middle table, where it lay looking inadequate. Not sure whether she hadn’t really read the document, or just wanted to hear it from me, I told her about my various internships which involved working with troubled kids in various capacities. But actually picking someone up from school and hanging out, making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches? No, I admitted.
    She put her hand to the back of her neck and rubbed. I figured we’d chat for a few more minutes and then she’d ask me to leave. She’d want someone who knew what they were doing, of course. This had been a silly exercise and I felt bad for wasting her time, of which she clearly had too little already.
    “Interestingly enough,” she said, “your experience might better prepare you for Luke than I could have hoped.”
    She took off her glasses, and I saw something in her eyes that I recognized—a deep and fearsome sadness.
    “You see,” she