Keeping Time: A Novel Read Online Free Page B

on all the earth, not in his country or anyone else’s, that he wanted nothing more in all the world than for her to be his wife, and that he was then and there pledging himself to her forever, whether she consented to be his wife or not.
    Daisy, remembering him, his eyes, his breath on her neck. It was all coming back to her now. The spigot opened, and all manner of things rushed out. Remembering the way he had looked at her when he spoke those words—handsome, honest, strong. And his voice as he whispered, how it broke with emotion, and how she couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe.
    There was an absence of sound. No rustling of starched bed linens or cotton pajamas. No creaking of the floorboards. From the moment those words left his mouth until she spoke, it was as though all was suspended in a vacuum.
    Remembering how she had consented, of course, right then and there. His words were a dream come true. Falling back through time, from { text-indent: 0; habmeher hospital room into her old bedroom again. Landing on her bed. Feeling his arms wrapped around her. His body on hers. His breath on her neck. His joy repeated softly in her ear. Sensations of tingling and warmth behind both ears and deep, deep, deep in her stomach.
    The plan: Michael would go back to New York, to Brooklyn, and get work. As a pianist. Performing and teaching on the side. Daisy, recalling the memory of his playing at her parents’ house. There was no piano on the base, he’d used theirs. His fingers swept brilliantly over the keys, bringing that piano to life like no one else could—not before, nor since. Recollecting how worried he’d been about taking her overseas, away from her family, without being able to provide for her. And, of course, her mother wouldn’t help. She was never nice to him. Coldly polite was all she could manage. She warned Daisy not to let it get serious. Her words fell on deaf ears. Daisy would have walked to the ends of the earth for him.
    The last thing he did was take off his watch and slip it on her wrist, telling her that it would have to stand in for an engagement ring. He said his most important possession should be worn by his most important person.
    He wrote every day, long passionate letters about her, about them, about his piano competitions, about his attempts to line up students, and how he was counting the hours until he could return to Liverpool to get her, bring her home, make her his wife, and be her husband.
    Then he stopped writing, quite suddenly. He just stopped writing after months of daily letters, without a word of explanation. Daisy wrote letter after letter, begging for some" xmlns:ops="h

word, but got nothing. Nothing evercame. She wrote constantly to his parents, Brooklyn town hall, the U.S. military. Nothing.
    Daisy, on the hospital bed, knowing this: Part of her was still bothered that she had never received an explanation. And knowing this, too: She was glad that she still had the watch, and that it was at home now, waiting for her in that jewelry box on her bedside table.

SIX
    THE HOUSE, UNINHABITABLE for two additional days after Daisy was released from the hospital. Dennis had to hire experts to clean out the cellar and restore the electrical panel. It was going to cost an ungodly sum, but he was hoping he would make it up on the sale, which he was now pretty sure was going to happen. His mother had not argued the point since her hospital stay, falling silent whenever it came up, listening to his plans and suggestions without a word of refusal.
    Daisy, spending two nights at Dennis and Amanda’s. Offering to make them a cup of tea every chance she got. Neither one ever accepting. After dinner the second night, when Dennis and Amanda went into the living room to watch television, Daisy excused herself to shower. Taking a new and particular interest in their shower head. Loving that she could picture the valves behind the wall.
    After showering, getting ready for bed. Having to convert the