After the Reunion Read Online Free Page B

irritable now; he was charming with everybody. He pushed his food around the plate and ate nothing, but Emily pretended not to notice so he would stay this sweet.
    Kate and Peter left soon after dinner, both with work to do; both carrying the boxes of food that Adeline had left for them before she went home. By the time Emily had turned out the lights and set the alarm system Ken was already upstairs.
    “What did you buy?” she asked him cozily, as they were undressing for bed.
    “What?” he asked—that strange, irritated voice again, like a stranger.
    “Those packages,” Emily said.
    “Oh, just some socks.”
    “I would have bought you socks, Ken. You should have told me.”
    He turned quickly and glared at her as if he wanted to strike her. “Can’t I even buy my own socks? Can’t you let me breathe?”
    She felt as if she were going to cry. “What did I do?”
    “Stop whining.”
    “I’m not whining. If I’m whining then I’m sorry I’m whining. I’m just upset because you’ve been acting so weird lately. You’re so unpredictable I don’t even know how to talk to you anymore. Everything I say or do seems to make you mad at me.”
    “Go to bed,” he said, dismissing her. He put on his swim trunks.
    “What are you doing?” she asked stupidly.
    “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m going for a swim.”
    “Ken, please talk to me. If something’s upsetting you I want to help you. Do you feel all right? You look sick … I don’t really mean sick, I mean … not well.”
    “I’m fine.”
    “Would you tell me if you didn’t feel right?”
    His face flushed with rage, actual rage. What had she done now? “Shut up,” he said. He left the room.
    Emily stood there with her arms wrapped around herself, shivering. Her teeth were almost chattering. Why did Ken act as if he suddenly hated her? Maybe there was another woman again, but maybe this time he was in love. It was possible. He was forty-seven, at the vulnerable age when men started to feel their own mortality. There were all those beautiful younger women everywhere he went, and who wouldn’t want Ken? This time it might not be just cheating, not just a fling; it could be serious, and he’d want to get rid of her, the old, boring wife …
    Maybe he was dying and didn’t want her to know. But their family doctor would have told her; the wife had to be told, even the old boring wife he wanted to be rid of.… No, she knew Ken well enough to realize that if he loved her so much that he wanted to protect her then he wouldn’t treat her the way he was now.
    Their bedroom terrace overlooked the swimming pool. Ken had turned on the lights all around the pool and in the water. She went out on the terrace and looked down at him, a dark little figure in the water, tossing up glittering spray, plowing through the rocking waves he was creating, frantically doing laps. Back and forth, back and forth, seemingly tirelessly, as if he had to exorcise a demon. It was cold out here in the night; Southern California was desert country. Emily began to shiver in earnest.
    He apparently had never noticed Kate’s bruise, and she and Ken had become such strangers to each other that she hadn’t even mentioned it to him after Kate left. What was happening to them?
    Her husband was exorcising an unknown demon, and she was in the desert. She was all alone.

Chapter Two
    Annabel had always been blessed with beauty, intelligence, good health, and an almost euphoric joy in the anticipation of the possibilities of life. She loved people, parties, adventures, champagne, sentimental little objects, sex, and romance. All her life strangers had turned around to look at her, especially men; partly because of her striking auburn-haired looks, and partly because it was unusual and pleasurable to see someone who looked so happy.
    So when she started her own business she knew that because it was going to be an enormous amount of work and take up nearly all her time, she