The Girl From Home Read Online Free Page A

hi,” says the African American nurse. “Yeah, you look like him.”
    Jonathan’s heard for years that he resembles his father, and he always took it as a compliment. His mother had never made any secret that looks were the reason she had married William Caine. Sometimes she’d say it as the worst type of insult, as in, Do you think I would have married him if I’d known what he was really like? But what did I know? I was twenty-two and he was the best-looking man I’d ever laid eyes on. Those looks included chiseled cheekbones, a long, straight nose, a strong, dimpled chin, and piercing blue eyes, all of which Jonathan inherited.
    â€œSo how’s he doing?” Jonathan asks again.
    The nurse shrugs. “The same. He was awake earlier today. Talking a little bit.”
    â€œDo you think he’s asleep for the night, or could he wake up?”
    â€œNo way of knowing.”
    Jonathan checks his watch. It’s five o’clock, and the reunion starts at eight. He needs no more than an hour’s lead time to get ready, which means he might as well spend the next two hours watching television beside his father, rather than doing so by himself in his father’s house.
    He goes back into his father’s hospital room and settles into the red vinyl recliner under the window. Finding the remote on the night table, Jonathan clicks on the wall-mounted television and surfs the channels until arriving at the Michigan–Ohio State football game, and decides that’s as good as anything else to pass the time.
    *  *  *
    Jonathan’s mother died nine months ago. Cancer. Diagnosed in June and dead by March. She had been complaining about something being wrong with her husband’s mind for at least two years before she got sick, although truth be told, she had been complaining about her husband’s mental state for as long as Jonathan could remember.
    The last time Jonathan saw his father was at his mother’s funeral. During the drive home, he finally saw what his mother had been talking about.
    â€œJohnny,” his father said.
    Jonathan let slide his father’s use of his childhood nickname, which he hadn’t answered to since high school. Like everyone else, his father had long referred to him as Jonathan, so the reversion to Johnny was just another sign of his old man’s decline.
    â€œI have something I need to ask you.”
    â€œSure,” Jonathan said.
    â€œI don’t know if you’ll know the answer, but I know you’re very smart, so I thought I’d ask.”
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œDid you hear that person who talked at the funeral and kept saying how your mother was an angel?”
    That person was her brother, Alan. Jonathan’s father had known him for more than fifty years.
    â€œYeah. Uncle Alan. Right.”
    â€œWell, is it true?”
    â€œIs what true, Dad?”
    â€œIs your mother an angel?”
    Of all the descriptions of Linda Caine, angelic was not one that Jonathan would apply. Beautiful. Overbearing. Ill-tempered. Those fit. Angelic, less so.
    â€œShe loved you very much,” Jonathan said.
    His father violently shook his head. “No. I’m not asking about me . I’m asking about her . Is she an angel? Is she?!”
    Jonathan found his father’s anger even more disconcerting than the absurdity of the question. For all of William Caine’s faults, losing his temper wasn’t one of them. Jonathan could scarcely recall the man being forceful about anything in his life, yet now he was demanding to know whether his dead wife was an angel with the urgency that suggested innocent lives were hanging in the balance.
    â€œDo you mean like in heaven?” Jonathan asked. “With wings and a halo?”
    â€œYes,” his father said with utmost seriousness.
    Jonathan sighed deeply. He truly didn’t know what type of response was appropriate in such a situation, but