London Tides: A Novel (The MacDonald Family Trilogy Book 2) Read Online Free

child-soldiers being treated in trauma counseling centers, an essay as powerful as it was heartbreaking.
    Grace possessed the rare ability to capture the humanity in any subject, whether it was the unemployed worker angry with the establishment or a hollow-eyed boy wielding an automatic weapon. In the last several years, her work had gotten more daring, the settings progressively more dangerous. Only someone who had endured her own share of tragedy could see past the surface of the story to the hurting souls beneath.
    Now she was back—not in Los Angeles, where she’d begun her career, or Dublin, where she’d been raised, but London, where she’d once intended to make a life with him. That had to mean something.
    Jake would know where Grace was staying, especially now that he was dating her friend, Asha. Ian had his mobile phone out of his pocket and the number on the dialer before he realized what he was doing, then slammed the phone back down on the counter.
    No. He wasn’t going to run after Grace and beg her for an explanation. If she wanted to talk to him, she obviously knew where to find him.

Chapter Three
    Asha lived on the third floor of a typical red brick mansion block in Earl’s Court, a transitional neighborhood in Southwest London not far from the museums and Hyde Park. Or it had been transitional once. As Grace hefted her cases and bag out of the black cab at the curb, it was clear more things had changed in ten years than just her. This little neighborhood was no longer a haven for broke students and immigrants, if the shiny new Jaguar parked a block down was any indication.
    Grace paid the driver through the open front window and palmed the key Asha had given her, the pile of belongings in front of the stairs making her wish she had packed more lightly. Even so, she’d brought hardly any personal items. The stack of black hard cases held her camera bodies and lenses, her lighting setups, and most importantly, her film archives.
    Four trips up and down three flights of stairs later, Grace collapsed against the door marked 14, shoved the key into the lock, and pushed. Nothing happened. She held down the latch and threw her shoulder into the door until it opened with a crack. Grace grinned. The door had stuck for as long as she could remember—only worsened with every coat of new paint—but Asha refused to have it shaved down. An extra layer of security for a woman living alone, she’d said.
    The interior of the flat, however, had changed, the warm jewel tones that her friend had once favored now painted over in shades of cream and white and gray. There was a new pullout sofa in the living room, which would serve as Grace’s bed while she stayed, and photography on the walls. Grace didn’t need to look to know they were the framed shots of India she had sent Asha for her last birthday. Their prominent positions warmed her.
    It took nearly as much work to get her things into the flat, where she stacked the cases neatly in the corner, taking up as little of the tiny space as possible. Then she wandered into the kitchen, which featured a table and four chairs, a two-burner hob, and a small refrigerator. Grace opened the door and smiled when she saw the fridge was empty but for a bowl of fruit and a half-finished carton of milk. So maybe Asha’s quick offer of hospitality hadn’t been completely unselfish. They’d once lived together, and Grace had quickly discovered that Asha’s idea of cooking was heating up takeaway.
    Tandoori chicken for dinner, it was.
    Grace double-checked the pantry and freezer to see what ingredients she would need to buy—all of them—and then plopped down on Asha’s sofa with a notepad. This was one of her favorite dishes, learned on the trip to India in which she’d first met Asha. It also happened to be one of Ian’s favorites. She and Ian’s brother, James, had tinkered with the recipe in Ian’s kitchen, arguing over the right proportions of cinnamon and black