Read Sarah's Window for Free Online Page A

into it with her mental armor and her clever strategies and her steeled will, only to meet with devastating failure. And on this evening, as they sat over their mesquite-grilled steaks in a corner booth of a steak house up in Emporia, they were unusually silent. They had both agreed earlier in the day not to talk of Will or his problems, but Will and his problems sat like a phantom at their table, and romance was nowhere to be found.
    Susan looked up from her baked potato and eyed her husband's plate; the twelve-ounce porterhouse and mountain of home fries had vanished without a trace.
    "You really should chew your food better."
    He gathered up his napkin and wiped his mouth clean. Like many of his gestures, there was a suggestion of restrained energy.
    "Still want to see a movie?" he asked.
    "I don't think so."
    "Too tired?"
    "Tired?" A short puff of air escaped her nostrils. "That doesn't even come close."
    "Shall we just go on home?"
    "I'd rather. If you don't mind."
    "No. I might work a little when I get back."
    "Will you take Amy home?"
    "Of course."
    It was rare when John took much notice of the people around him, but on this evening as he waited in silence for his wife to finish (unlike her husband, Susan tended toward delicate, mincing bites), he found himself watching their waitress as she served the table next to them. She was a soft-spoken young woman with wide, slanted eyes, although he did not at first see the resemblance.
     
    His mind was on his work, even as he pulled into the driveway and roused Susan from sleep, followed her into the hallway and took her coat from her shoulders, pecked her good night on the cheek.
    She turned from the landing, leaning heavily on the handrail. "Please, honey, do be quiet when you come to bed," she whispered. "Don't wake the baby."
    "I won't. You get to bed."
    She nodded and trudged up the stairs.
    Amy was usually to be found watching television in the old parlor, surrounded by a ring of litter, a Coke can or two, half-eaten bags of chips or bowls of popcorn. But the parlor was silent and there was no trace of the girl. It was not so much alarm as curiosity that swept through him, brought his thoughts back to the real world.
    He called out in a loud whisper, "Amy?"
    In the hallway he stood with his eyes on the stairs, wondering if she was in the nursery, hesitating to check for fear of waking Will, and that's when the door caught his attention. It was not at all as he had left it, but slightly ajar, with a sliver of pale light coming from the study.
    He opened the door and looked across the room to where Sarah slept. The small table lamp cast a soft light that encircled her; the rest of the room was lost in darkness. She lay sleeping with both arms stretched behind her head, like a child waiting to be undressed. Quietly he approached and gazed down on her. The loose sleeves of her sweater had fallen around her shoulders, baring the insides of her arms, that vulnerable stretch of pale blue-veined skin, and he was overcome by a shocking urge to kiss her there. One hand hung poised in the air, the fingers gently curled; the other was hidden in the mass of her chestnut hair. The faintly exotic slant of her eyes and the high-winged brows were even more pronounced now that her eyes were closed, and it seemed her softly parted lips were offering up a kiss. He imagined with a kind of wistfulness the men who had seen her mouth just like this.
    Will slept on her chest, his tiny body rising and falling with the rhythm of her breath, his flushed cheek on the pillow of her breast.
    Never had the sight of a woman moved him so deeply; not even his wife, after all the years of intimacy, had ever appeared to him in quite this way. Will seemed to have tamed her just as she had tamed him, and there was a harmony in their togetherness, as if they were of the same mind, were dreaming the same dream.
    She began to stir. The long, slender fingers came alive in a graceful, slow dance, and then she