The Awakening Read Online Free Page B

time. They’d eluded their friends time and time again to spend their precious hours together. At first, there had been no arguments—in truth, they hadn’t talked enough to argue, they’d wanted nothing more than to touch, to be in one another’s arms, naked, making love. The unfailing flame of simple chemistry had been so strong that they’d defied all advice and married one weekend, standing before friends and the priest in a small town in southern Georgia. For a few years, they had lived in the bliss of the young and innocent. Finn had graduated, and scholarships and student work programs had ended. Megan had another two years to go. Finances grew tight and music equipment was expensive. They’d begun to struggle. There were arguments about what made money, what didn’t, what was good, what wasn’t. The differences between them which had at first seemed so charming became points of friction. She had hunches and intuitions; he was entirely pragmatic. She was from Massachusetts, and other than her initial, abandoned adoration for him, she tended to a New Englander’s reserve. Finn was from the Deep South, ready to plow into any situation and offer anything they had to anyone. She’d always been a good daughter and student, he’d been a bad boy at times, suspended for fighting now and then in high school, barely squeaking into college with a music scholarship just because he’d had such a natural talent. She was close to her parents; his were divorced and remarried. He made dutiful calls once a month, and sent cards and presents to his little half siblings, but they seldom visited either of his parents. Finn loathed his stepfather, barely tolerated his stepmother, and had been on his own from the day he had graduated from high school. Then his father died of a heart attack, and he was torn between resentment that he hadn’t even been remembered in the will, and guilt that he hadn’t made more of an effort to communicate despite his unease about his stepmother. He’d started spending long hours out when Megan thought he should have needed her most. He took more and more out of town work. Jealousy, doubt, mistrust . . . the little enemies that form together to tear down a relationship began to flourish and grow. Then, slowly, little shadows of doubt and anger began, and then, for Megan, the final, agonizing, hateful straw, the flutist Finn brought into the band they had formed when they weren’t working together as a duo. She didn’t leave right away; she was still too desperately in love. And arguments were too easily solved because anger was such a vivid emotion, and fights too easily solved by giving into the heat and adrenaline of the moment, falling back into bed, and rising later to discover that nothing had been solved. At last, the doubts moved in too deeply, and she had no intention of losing all self-respect for herself, or letting her own hopes for a fulfilling career become crushed by standing in the background, giving way completely. They’d had a fight in which she’d gotten mad and hit him in the head with a loaf of bread. They’d fought on the balcony; neighbors had seen them. The bread had become a wine bottle in the retelling, and in some stories, she’d beaten Finn, in others, he’d beaten her. Rumors had spread. He’d been furious with the things said about him, more concerned with rumor than with her, and so, she had left.
    But there was really no way to leave Finn behind completely. She had always loved the look of him, the feel of him, the deep quality of his voice, the sound of his laughter. The scent of him. Her folks had been living in Maine at the time, and she’d gone home, and taken work with an old friend who was a guitarist, singing light rock and folk music at a coffee shop. The pay hadn’t been great, but the hours and perks had been wonderful—great coffee, good food, and time to work on