This Is How I'd Love You Read Online Free

one?”
    “‘If I were loved, as I desire to be.’”
    Her father nodded as he closed his eyes. “‘What is there in the great sphere of the earth / And range of evil between death and birth, / That I should fear,—if I were loved by thee?’”
    “Of course you know it.”
    “Why ‘of course’?”
    “Because you know everything, Daddy. You probably already know whether or not I’ll get the part.”
    He looked amused. “Yes, in fact, I do. With that poem, I’ve never known anyone to be rejected.”
    Hensley raised her eyebrows. “Really? Do tell,” she said as she pulled on her gloves.
    “It was one of your mother’s favorites. One of our favorites.”
    Hensley nodded. She’d known this, of course. It had been her mother who’d first recited it for her when she was just a girl. But she’d wondered if her father remembered. Now she knew.
    “So, wish me luck,” she said, putting on her hat.
    “I will only wish that the director recognizes the bounty of talent you possess.”
    “I should be back by seven. Marie and I will walk together.”
    He nodded, satisfied with this exchange. “But, please, do be quiet as you enter.”
    She knew his opponent, Mr. Wern, would arrive within the half hour, and after a limited conversation, the apartment would become a hushed sanctuary. The sewing machine, the guitar, the sound of her feet crossing the floor were all considered too loud. A chess player’s concentration was a sacred thing, perhaps the only sacred thing in the world.
    And who was she to deny him this respite from his daily work, which increasingly produced a furrowed brow, fraught words, and tense coughs? Her father didn’t trust Wilson, or the rhetoric that had become his foreign policy. He was worried that it was only a matter of time before the United States joined the butchery overseas.
    She had not always been so understanding of his habits. When she was eleven and twelve and thirteen, Hensley had spent most of the time sullen and angry at his archaic inclinations. She would slam doors to accentuate her silent voice. Stomp her feet when he addressed her as “daughter.” She missed her mother and wanted an embrace. A smile. Warmth without humor. Her brother, away at boarding school, had been no help at all. If anything, on his visits home, he highlighted her isolation by going out every night with his own friends.
    On her fourteenth birthday, her father had looked at her earnestly. “Is it a happy birthday?” he’d asked.
    She did not reply. She wanted to scream at him. To ask him why he couldn’t just wish her a happy birthday the way he was supposed to. She wanted to tell him she’d never had a happy birthday, not since Mother died, and that he was a poor, poor substitute. Instead, she was silent. He walked across the living room to the front closet and pulled a large, clumsily wrapped package from it. “See if this makes it a happy birthday.” He carried the parcel across the room and placed it on the low table in front of the sofa.
    Hensley crossed the room, her heeled shoes making loud punctuation marks. “What is it?” she asked, standing beside him.
    “Why, I do believe it is a gift.” He smiled and sat on the sofa.
    “What type?” she replied, unwilling to be placated so easily.
    “Are there types? Tell me the categories and I will attempt to classify it.”
    Hensley stomped her foot. But she caught her reflection in the antique glass beside the fireplace and suddenly, on the occasion of her fourteenth birthday, her juvenile foot stomping looked either ill-mannered or comical. She turned directly to comedy.
    “One: useful but boring. Two: entertaining but useless. Three: perfect.”
    Her father’s face betrayed no acknowledgment of her sudden transformation. “Perhaps the receiver of the gift must apply the category. For it depends, completely, on her. That is the risk of gift giving.”
    “True.” Hensley sat gingerly on the sofa beside her father. His beard and his