Read Blood Relations for Free Online

Nicholas, who owned a plant nursery north of Tampa, had driven three hundred miles with a truckful of soil and fertilizer and pots of flowers, shrubs, and palm trees, all verdant and shining. Nick had installed a sprin NIEL
    kler system and hidden lights on timers, and it was all perfect.
    Then two years later the hurricane had blown through, leaving everything smashed and ruined; even the tile roof had been ripped off the house in a great groan and cry, like a limb torn from a body. Nick had returned the next spring with more plants. The garden had been replanted exactly as it had been before-better than before-and the house had been rebuilt.
    Sitting back on her heels, Dina caught a glimpse of a face at the kitchen window. Her daughter, watching her.
    Melanie had shouted from the terrace awhile ago to say she had a phone call, and Dina, feeling invaded, had snapped at her, then apologized. Now the face disappeared, and Dina moved along the walkway. Her knees ached a little, but she paid no mind to that. From behind her she heard the laughter of the teenager next door, a shriek, then a splash as though someone had gone into the pool. The boy’s high, clear voice pierced her with a stab of despair so acute it was almost physical.
    Taking a few deep breaths, Dina trimmed a scraggly branch down to the proper level. A cluster of blood-red blossoms dropped into her hand. For a while now, she had not taken her pills. They dulled the pain but made her sleep too much, and she couldn’t think clearly.
    She moved the cardboard and knelt again. She wore loose cotton pants. Her wide-brimmed hat lay across the yard on a step of the gazebo; the sun had gone behind the black olive trees on the neighbors’ property. There was time for this today because she’d skipped her doctor’s appointment. She had driven by his office in that ugly, square, glass-walled building without even slowing her car. The dread she had felt, thinking of going inside, had changed to giddy exhilaration as the building shrank in her rearview mirror. The last four sessions Dr. Berman had gone probing into her past, as if there he might find some clue to explain why she grieved so. She had wanted to scream at him. You idiot, this is not in my past.
    it is here, now. Always with me. He was poking for faults and weaknesses, as if the fault, once isolated, could be fixed. But is grief a fault? He had given an answer so infuriatingly irrelevant that she had quite forgotten it. She finally understood that he was leading her to his own conclusion: Dina Hagen was weak. Weak and self-indulgent.
    Sam had sent her to this doctor hoping it would help.
    For months Sam had watched her, humored her, treated her like a sick child. Sometimes his patience would fray, then he would go out and run until it was too dark to see, or work out on his weight machine-clank, clank, clank-until he could hardly stand up.
    His way was to bear it. Be strong. He was such a master, Sam was, at burying things and pouring concrete into the grave, then piling boulders on top and turning his back. But Dina could not do it, and nothing, nothing had dulled her pain. It was too much to bear.
    Dragging the bag along, Dina moved slowly toward the gazebo. She tucked a tendril of hair into the knot at the nape of her neck, then blotted her face on her sleeve. The shirt was one of Sam’s, tied at her waist, the scent of his body still in the fabric. He didn’t wear cologne, so it was only Sam that she smelled. Lie in the same bed with a man for half your life, and you know everything about him: his scent, his voice, the feel of his body, his moods, his thoughts. His infidelity, Three years ago he had been unfaithful. By the time Dina had been sure enough to accuse him, Sam said it was over. He had refused to name this woman, though Dina suspected it must have been one of the lawyers at his office. Dina had seen them at holiday parties. Pretty women, with their white teeth and lustrous hair and narrow