Read Night Corridor for Free Online Page B

shyness.
     
    "I knew you worked at the bakery. Your aunt told me. Do you like it there?"
     
    "It's okay. Yeah, I like it, I guess."
     
    "I used to be able to cook," she said. "When I was a girl. I've forgotten how though. Anyway," she laughed lightly, "I have to buy food. I don't have any."
     
    "You can get stuff at the store. It's not far. I don't do no baking at work. I just help out, washing pots and pans, cleaning up and stuff. Sometimes they let me pour batter into the pans. I like doing that." He ran a hand across his chest, like it was dirty and he was wiping the dirt off on his shirt. The trunk probably was dirty; it had been locked away in some corner of a dusty old basement room at the hospital, for years.
     
    Picture albums inside, Nurse Addison had said. Other things. She looked back at the young man. I don't want him to leave. I don't want to be here alone with the trunk. Maybe he would tell her about the place where she would be washing dishes. The landlady said it was right across the street from The Bakery. What was it called? The name was written on a piece of paper in her purse. Frank's. Yes, that was it. Frank's. But before she could think of a question, he had his hand on the doorknob. "Well I gotta run. I gotta get back to work."
     
    "Oh." She fought a moment's panic. "Okay. Well... thank you again."
     
    And then he was gone. She hadn't known how to stop him. So much in her life she hadn't known how to stop.
     
    She turned her back to it and looked out the window. A woman was walking past the building pushing a dark blue baby carriage, puffs of pink satin peaking out around the edges. She had a memory flash of her own baby daughter, who would turn nine in July.
     
    Does she know about me? she wondered. Know that I exist? But then, who would be cruel enough to tell her about a mother who spent all those years in a mental institution? No. Best she didn't know. But that did not lessen the sense of loss that never left her. That had left a hole in her heart.
     
    Feeling a need to breathe in fresh air, Caroline tried to raise the window. It struck at first, then creaked upward, letting in the smell of rain. The mist was cool on her skin.
     
    She had resisted taking a pill last night. She needed to stay alert in this new and strange place. She had lain awake a long time when she heard someone playing the piano. Raising herself up on one elbow, she listened to the notes raining softly down on her through her ceiling. It was not a tune she recognized, but the melody had a haunting quality that reached deep inside her. It sounded far better than when Mrs. Green played in the big hall. In a way it was almost like listening to Billie Holiday sing. She knew it had to be the piano teacher Mrs. Bannister had mentioned to her. Apparently, he hadn't been able to sleep either.
     
    As she stood in the window, the woman pushing the carriage had moved out of sight, and a fair-haired man in a tan trench coat emerged from the building and proceeded down the rain-slicked street, in the opposite direction. Was he the piano teacher? Had it been his hands that produced the lovely music that swept through her like lovely entwining ribbons of sound, and soon lulled her to sleep? She had not heard him pass by her door, or go down the stairs. Maybe he's on his way to lunch, she thought, and the thought made her realize she was hungry. At the hospital, she would already have eaten her breakfast in the dining room with the others. It would be lunchtime. Yes, Harold Bannister and his friend had been on their lunch break.
     
    She glanced over her shoulder at the toaster sitting on a four-shelf metal table in the corner. Her mother's toaster had been the kind where you toasted the bread on one side, then had to turn the bread to toast the other side. The one at the hospital could cook four pieces at a time. This one looked like it worked the same way, though two pieces at a time. Not that it mattered since she had no