Thief of Dreams Read Online Free Page A

to her that she hadn’t seen through Edward Tally at once. It astonished her that she’d thought him the boldest and most exciting man she’d ever met, when, in fact, he was only unsympathetic, headstrong, and selfish. Jesus, she thought, but she’d been dumb. Love. Ha. Maybe someday they’d prove that being in love was a form of insanity, but she didn’t need to wait; God knows, in her own case, she’d proved it out already. “Hey, sugar,” he might say when they were courting, a big, delighted smile on his face, “I’ve come to take you to the movies.” And she’d be happy to go. “Put on your prettiest dress, sweetness, we’re going to a dance over to Blowing Rock.”
    She couldn’t deny him anything, anything at all. It was as though she had no will of her own. Only she did. It might have been down too deep to recognize, but it was there, making her moody and distracted, making her snap at her pupils in school and at Lily, and oddly, making her miss him outrageously when they weren’t together, although she could see now what she truly missed and would always miss was the ability to make some mark on him, the ability to make him acknowledge her in a way he was incapable of doing. She’d known she wanted something more from him, but she hadn’t herself known precisely what, and when he’d asked her to marry him, she’d thought she’d gotten what she was after at last.
    How bitter it was to be so wrong. Why, he hadn’t even asked her to marry him at all; he’d merely said he thought it was time they did. She remembered precisely the way he’d spoken, laying it out like some expensive dress he’d bought without bothering to find out if she liked the style or color or fabric or anything. And she’d said yes. Yes. But she’d mistaken one thing for another, mistaken his motives and her own.
    And even after they’d gotten married and she was able, however feebly at first, to say she wanted this rather than that, wished to do this rather than that, he couldn’t learn to take her into consideration. He could only be surprised. He could only figure he’d made a mistake in a few specific cases, or that she was in one of her moods. But the specifics never added up to a general understanding, except that he began to figure he couldn’t please her no matter what he did. But he could never learn to take her into account.
    One Saturday he’d driven her out to see a house in Cedar Hill, and when she’d said she liked it, he’d flashed her his big, boyish, disarming grin and told her he’d signed papers on it and made a down payment, no matter that she’d thought they couldn’t begin to pay for it. And they wouldn’t have been able to if she hadn’t gotten busy and found herself a job and got a colored woman to come in and do a bit of cleaning and look after James. Still, those had been their best years, even though she was always tired, and they had begun to fight—or she had, since he would never fight—and there was a basic unhappiness underneath everything they did. She could make some sort of impression on the house, choose paint and wallpaper, plant flowers, arrange and rearrange the little furniture they owned, and when their meager finances allowed, even add something here and there. And of course she had James, who was so small and sweet and pliable. But then Edward Tally walked in one fine day and announced that he’d quit his job with Watauga Light and Power Company and taken a job on construction in Morganton seventy-five miles away, so he saw them only on weekends, and not all of those by far, since he started working six days a week. And sure, the overtime meant she could give up her own job if she wanted, but she didn’t want. But it also meant that if he wished to see his family, he’d have to spend nearly three hours Sunday morning driving up