If You Come Softly Read Online Free Page B

instead of wondering.” After a moment, she said, “It takes time, you know.”
    “But you have lots of time and I ... I just never see you in the study anymore.”
    “I haven’t felt much in the mood for writing anything lately.” She glanced at him then back down at her plate, drumming her fingers on the table the way she did when she was annoyed. “When you have so much real drama in your life, it’s hard to think about fiction. I’m taking some me time now. Figure with what I have saved and this house being paid for and Norman paying for your school, we’ll be okay.” She reached across the table and covered his hand with her own. “Okay, honey?”
    Jeremiah nodded but didn’t say anything.
    Some mornings he woke up remembering little things-like the way his father’s arm looked when it was draped across his mama’s shoulder or his father and mother hugging by the kitchen sink, the water still running from the dishes one of them had been washing.
    He wondered where that stuff went to, where love went to, how a person could just love somebody one day and boom-the next day love somebody else.
    “Tell me about Percy, Miah.”
    “It’s okay. You know. It’s a school. Uniform’s really the only thing makes it much different from Tech. It’s whiter. Much whiter. But I figured that.”
    “They think you’re on scholarship?”
    Jeremiah shrugged and stared down at his plate. “Nobody said anything stupid.”
    “Some people going to think that, you know. Don’t let them get to you.”
    “I won‘t—I mean, I know. But I kind of rather have them think that than know the truth, right?”
    His mother nodded. “Yeah, honey-but it’s okay if they know the truth. I’m not saying you have to strut it. But you don’t have to be ashamed of it either.”
    The truth was he was Norman Roselind’s son. And anyone who had ever stepped foot inside a movie theater or picked up a paper knew who Norman Roselind was. Yeah, he was proud of his father and the movies he’d made. But sometimes he just wanted to be Miah. And the truth was, his mother had gotten a lot of attention for her three books-you said her name, Nelia Roselind, and people knew it. Norman and Nelia—they had even been on the cover of a couple of magazines. One magazine had called them “most romantic.” Jeremiah twirled the spaghetti around on his fork. He wondered what the magazines would say now-or what they had already said. A long time ago, he had stopped reading them, too afraid to find some nasty gossip about his family somewhere between their pages.
    “I walk into Percy and it’s like I can reinvent myself or something, you know? Without Daddy’s movies and your books. Just me.”
    “Well, don’t go reinventing yourself too much. It’s okay to be our son. Remember Brooklyn Tech—people knew who you were there and you got along fine.”
    “Yeah, I remember.” At Tech, some people treated him strange and some people treated him okay. His homeboys, the guys he’d grown up with, they were cool, had always been cool. But new kids, well, sometimes they just acted weird, like he was some untouchable god or something. He hated that.
    If things had turned out different, he would have stayed at Tech. If this. If that. Would his life always be filled with “ifs?” If his parents were still together. If Lois Ann had never been born. If that girl had told him her name.
    Percy Academy was one of the most expensive schools in New York City. Nobody knew if that meant it was one of the best. Jeremiah didn’t think so. It had been his father’s idea. Jeremiah would have been fine staying at Brooklyn Tech, which was right in the hood and where he’d gone to ninth grade. Or even Stuyvesant. He knew some brothers there. But his father had insisted on a private school, talking about Jeremiah being his only son and all and wanting the best for him. Jeremiah had finished his first year at Tech, had made the varsity team and gotten straight A’s.