The Last Day Read Online Free Page A

it wasn't true. He and Natasha hadn't talked about having another child since Barney's accident, and the thought comforted him. For the first time in a very long time, Ward McCarty felt a degree of optimism about the future.

FOUR
    While standing on the curb, waiting for the shut-tle, Ward spotted his young seatmate climbing into a dark green Porsche Cabriolet. The driver, a woman with blond hair and pale skin, wore a flowery scarf and dark glasses that obscured her features. Perhaps the woman was the girl's mother, the NASCAR fan.
    Six minutes later he climbed down from the bus, walked to his car, and frowned at the thin film of red dust coating the original black paint. Leaving the car in the open sunlight wouldn't do anything to prolong the paint's life. The vehicle, a pristine 1994 BMW 740i, had been his father'sonly admission to the world that he was a man of above- average means. Ward climbed in and started the engine. Aiming the heavy sedan toward the exit he pressed on the accelerator and felt the powerful V-8 respond.
    Ward turned on the radio, which was always set to NPR. He didn't listen to music much when he was driving. He had never felt the need for a soundtrack in his life. Natasha had joked on more than one occasion that her husband danced to the melodious voices of liberal commentators.
    Although it should have been just the opposite, Ward's heart seemed to grow heavier as he drove north on I-85. After leaving the Interstate at the Concord Mills exit, Ward drove past the racetrack, up Highway 29, and entered Concord on Cabarrus Avenue, using the new roundabout. He drove out Highway 73 and turned left at the Exxon onto Gold Hill Road. Two miles later he slowed for a doe and her two spotted fawns, which ran across the road near a farm owned by the grandson of a mill owner whose last name was synonymous with bath towels.
    Turning onto the asphalt driveway a mile fartherdown the road, Ward drove through the woods, past the front door, and on around to the side of the house, where he used his remote to open the center garage door. He parked beside Natasha's Lexus, the hood cool to his touch. His other car, a dark blue Toyota Highlander, was parked in the third bay. He rarely drove the Toyota, preferring his father's old BMW
    Ward paused in the kitchen where the answering machine blinked a red 4. Natasha hadn't bothered to listen to his short dispatches from the red- hot West. Ward held his finger over the button and hesitated before he finally hit delete.
    A stack of unopened mail on the counter lay beside a bottle opener with one cork still impaled on its screw and another nearby. It was Natasha who'd said you never leave a cork impaled on the screw. He hadn't asked what law of winery that violated. Strains of canned laughter drifted into the kitchen from the den. Since the wall of windows overlooking the woods behind the house was dark and there was no moonlight, the television screen was the sole illumination.
    Natasha, wearing a light robe over her nightgown, lay sleeping on the sleek sectional sofa.An empty bottle of wine stood on the coffee table, and a blister pack of Ambien rested nearby. Ward frowned to see that of the original eight tablets, only two remained.
    He frowned at the empty wineglass standing on the stone floor beside the couch. She appeared pale, but at least her chest was rising and falling. Ward stared down at her delicate features, washed by the uncertain light of the screen. One of his fears was that he would arrive home and find her dead.
    Life was fragile.
    Death happened just like that.
    This he knew far too well.
    Natasha was even more beautiful than she'd been the day he met her in Seattle a dozen years earlier. She had been a surgical resident attending a party given by a college friend of his— an artist whose paintings depicted a perfect, though surreal, rural world. There had been an immediate and mutual attraction, and they'd been married three months later in her parents’