No Way Home Read Online Free

fifteen years ago last month. There were days when it seemed a hundred years ago and nights when it might have been yesterday.
    He still lived in the same house, and sometimes, in the dead of an evening, he glimpsed her in another room, but always a shadow instantly carried her off. In the small hours he occasionally woke to find her only a breath away. If he did not move, the darkness held her there until dawn.
    Such would have been the case now had he not stirred.
    Birds were making themselves heard through the half dark. Once awake, he could not drop back to sleep.
    The house, which he had grown up in, was less than a mile from the green. It was more Gothic than Victorian and not in total repair, for he was a lummox with tools. When his mother had moved to Florida the house had become his. Elizabeth had had plans for it, but they died with her. Downstairs the kitchen and dining room were small and dim, with windows of dusty panes and peeling mullions. Floral wallpaper had long lost its bloom. In the living room he had installed a desk salvaged from the town clerk’s office. It matched his one at the police station, which made him feel more there than here.
    Upstairs were two bedrooms and a good-sized bath. After Elizabeth’s death he had moved from the large bedroom to the small one, once partially furnished for the child they had never had.
    He showered with his eyes closed until the water ran cold. Shaved, he patted his cheeks with witch hazel. Dressed, he watched the sunrise sign in another day while what was left of the night dripped off the trees. His thoughts were not of his wife but of Lydia Lapham. He felt stronger than ever that the bullet that had killed her mother had been meant for her.
    When he stepped out the front door the sun was already swimming over the lawn. Clumps of unattended tiger lilies, rearing up foliage but not yet blossoms, cast the aura of a jungle. A robin flew out of its bedroom in a maple. Abruptly he stopped and scanned the street, as if he too were a possible target.
    He checked in at the station. Meg O’Brien was the only one there, for the duty officer on the graveyard shift had left. Caught in the act of sneezing, she brought a tissue to her face. “Maybe this isn’t the time to mention it,” she said, wiping her nose, “but Mrs. Bowman rang up yesterday. Should I tell you what she called you?”
    “I don’t think so,” he said with a cringe that evoked a memory of Arlene Bowman’s mouth, a dash of violence in the smile. He began checking entries in the night log.
    “Why can’t you pick a nice girl,” Meg said, “instead of fooling with those phonies from the Heights?”
    “No lectures, Meg, please,” he said and closed the log.
    “Your hair’s sticking up in back.”
    He groomed it with the flat of his hand. She had more to say, but he did not stay to listen.
    He drove to the house of Lydia Lapham’s aunt. Though still early, he knew she and Lydia would be up. The porch light was burning weakly in the sunshine, and the night officer who had spelled Sergeant Avery was dozing in his cruiser.
    “You can go now,” Morgan said, startling him.
    The young officer snapped on his cap and squared it. “Should I come back tonight?”
    “We’ll see.”
    In the roses near the porch was a spiderweb in which a powdery moth was fastened like a miniature angel. Morgan thought of rescuing it, but was hesitant to interfere with the balance of life, which he felt was tentative enough. He meandered to the back of the house because he reckoned they would be in the kitchen.
    “May I come in?” he said through the screen door.
    No tears were in Lydia’s eyes. They were all in her aunt’s. Miss Westerly, her face crinkled lace that had aged overnight, was in her robe and quietly disappeared. Lydia sat at the table, near the raised window, with her hands embracing a cup of coffee that may have gone cold. Morgan doubted she had slept. In her wrinkled white uniform she looked like a