Leaves Read Online Free Page B

“Now these are just allegations, mind you.” His eyes twinkled when he said it. “But the Post feels confident enough in its sources to go to press with it tomorrow morning.”
    â€œDo you have a statement from Bruce?”
    â€œHe has until midnight tonight to return our calls. I’m guessing he won’t.”
    Maxwell shook his head. “This is incredible.”
    â€œYou’re not really surprised, are you?”
    â€œThat Bruce might be involved in something shady? No. I’m just surprised he was careless enough to get caught. I mean, no offense, Mike, but you don’t exactly have Woodward and Bernstein on your staff.”
    â€œI won’t convey that comment to our reporters. They’d be devastated.”
    â€œDo you think anything is going to come of this?”
    â€œYou mean criminal charges? Unlikely. Bruce knows the law too well. He’ll figure out a way around it. The allegations will still be there, though. Not the best thing for a reelection campaign.”
    â€œJeez, you’re right. He’s up for reelection next year. I didn’t even think about that.”
    Mike patted Maxwell on the shoulder. “Gotta think about these things.” He walked toward the door, grabbing another half of a muffin on the way. “I need to get to the paper. You’ll keep this under your hat until tomorrow, right?”
    â€œYeah, of course.”
    Maxwell speared a piece of cantaloupe before leaving the room. Stuff like this didn’t happen in town very often. Mike would get front page news out of it for weeks.

**^^^**

    When she finally opened her eyes and looked at the clock on Doug’s nightstand, Maria saw it was five minutes after ten. Fifteen minutes later than yesterday. If I keep this up, I’ll be skipping lunch in a couple of weeks. She stretched, rolled over, and slowly raised herself out of bed. She thought she remembered Doug kissing her goodbye before the sun came up. That might have been yesterday, though.
    What do we think , she wondered as she sat on the edge of the bed, shower, brush teeth, breakfast? Breakfast, shower, brush teeth? Skip it all until a half hour before Doug comes home? Maria made what could easily turn out to be the biggest decision of her day and headed toward the bathroom for the shower, brushing her teeth while the water heated up.
    In the five weeks since Olivia had gone off to Brown University, Maria found herself utterly unmotivated for the first time she could remember. The initial few days, she was just sad at the thought that her daughter was grown and gone from the house. Then there was the day right after that when the realization she had nothing on the agenda seemed kind of liberating. Then a day of “taking time for herself” evolved into another day of the same, followed by yet another.
    That this came on the heels of the most intense nine months of her life almost certainly added to her sense of displacement. All winter and spring she’d spent at least part of every day with her mother at the hospital and then at the hospice, talking to her even when Mom could no longer reply. Then the summer was spent letting Olivia go ever so slowly – drives into Manhattan or up into the mountains, excessive amounts of shopping, clam shacks and homemade pasta, movie marathons of Disney princesses, hunks-through-the-ages, and everything Susan Sarandon ever did – leading up to that last frantic week preparing for the trip to Providence. She and Doug cried most of the way back to Oldham and drank two bottles of wine that night over bad Italian takeout. In the morning, though, Doug had a stimulating, distracting job in Hartford to return to and she had decisions to make about whether to eat before showering. She had only recently turned forty, was years away from being able to expect grandchildren – “Mom, I’m not sure I’ll ever want kids” was something Olivia had said far