Seasons Under Heaven Read Online Free

was hoping to take you to lunch somewhere nice. When’s the last time we went out? I thought maybe that little South American restaurant over on Hilliard Street. We could talk—”
    “Harry, I don’t want to go out. Look at me. I’m a mess. Could I take a rain check?”
    “A mess? You’re beautiful. Slim and young-looking. I heard at least three people at the wedding asking if you were Sarah’s sister.”
    She couldn’t help being amused. “Don’t lie.”
    “Well, okay, just one. But it happened. Scout’s honor.”
    “I’m fifty years old and I feel sixty-five. Forced into mandatory retirement. Totally obsolete.”
    Harry’s grin faded and he frowned down at her. “You really are depressed, aren’t you?”
    “And you aren’t?”
    He slid his hands into his pockets and looked down at his feet. He was thinking, trying to answer honestly, she knew. Harry wasn’t one to just tell her what she wanted to hear.
    “The other night,” he said seriously, “after Sarah and Larry drove off, and the guests started going home, I went in the bathroom and cried. It was tough. My baby, Daddy’s little girl, riding off into the sunset with some guy who’s going to take care of her for the rest of her life.” His eyes misted up even now as he recalled those emotions.
    Sylvia smiled softly. “I should have known. And there I was flitting around, laughing and smiling for the guests, ignoring you completely.”
    “I wanted to be ignored when I felt like that,” he said. “But it passed. This morning, I started thinking differently. I started thinking of this time of our lives as a beginning instead of an ending. We can do whatever we want now. All these years, when we’ve wanted to do things, but couldn’t because we had the kids to think of—well, now we can go anywhere, do anything, and it’s just the two of us. No more excuses. No more reasons to stay in the same old place. I started getting excited, Sylvia.”
    Sylvia looked up at him, frowning, wondering where he was going with this. “So where is it you want to go? What is it you want to do?”
    Again, he looked down at his feet, searching for honest words, and she realized this midday homecoming wasn’t just a whim. He had something specific to say. She tried to brace herself. “Harry?”
    “You sure you don’t want to go eat?” he asked her. “Even just a burger? We could eat in the car, even.”
    She sighed. “This must be really big if you have to say it over food.”
    “I’m just hungry. It’s really nothing. In fact, we can talk about it another time.”
    “Let me run a brush through my hair, and we can go,” she said.
    Harry grinned, and she knew it was what he’d really wanted. She went into the bathroom, brushed her just-permed hair, and applied some lipstick so she wouldn’t look so pale. She powdered the redness over her nose and decided her eyes were hopeless. It was just as well that Harry wanted to go out, she decided. She did need a diversion today.
    She followed him out to the Explorer and waited while he unlocked it for her. She looked around at the little houses on the cul-de-sac where they’d lived for so long. Near the neck of the little circle, she saw three of Brenda’s kids helping their dad drag picnic tables into the empty lot between their house and the Sullivans. Today was Joseph’s birthday, she remembered. They had invited her to the party, but she’d almost forgotten.
    She remembered when her own were little, before the culde-sac called Cedar Circle had been developed around them. Their own house had been built on a huge, twenty-acre plot at the top of Survey Mountain. It had been much smaller then, until Harry’s surgical practice had gotten off the ground. Almost yearly, they had added something to their house.
    When she and Harry had made the decision to sell some of the land to a builder to develop into a cul-de-sac, they had done it for the kids. The children needed playmates, she’d told Harry, and he