Read While He Was Away for Free Online

hair.
    “The way she’s looking at him. In the mirror, I mean.”
    Linda’s mouth twists. “So you think you see your grandpa somewhere in that picture? My father?”
    I nod. “I think so. I mean, I see the tip of a man’s shoulder. That’s his hand holding that old camera. I think . And isn’t that a flashbulb—that little pop of light there at the edge of the mirror?” I let out a sigh. “Man, I love old photos! So mysterious—I’ve got to show this to David.”
    I go quiet then. I might not get to show this to David. I glance at the clock. Really, I’ve got to get to bed. I’ve got to grab a couple hours of sleep so I can be halfway coherent tomorrow when I see him again. Because I will see him again.
    I feel Linda watching me. If I get worked up, she’ll drop this whole conversation. Or it’ll takes five times as long as it should take. So I swallow down tomorrow and ask, “What year would this be anyway? Way before you were born, right?”
    “Way.” Linda forces out a laugh. “Look at her dress. So not nineteen sixty-seven.”
    I study the fitted bodice, the row of pearly buttons. The neatly cuffed sleeves. The simple collar, secured by a little scrolling pin at the throat.
    “Very mid-forties,” Linda says. “She’s probably about eighteen there.”
    “Wow,” I say.
    “Wow,” Linda mutters.
    “Your parents were married a long time before they had you.”
    Linda shrugs. “If ten years is a long time, then I guess they were. My mother was forty when she had me. She wasn’t planning on getting pregnant. I don’t think she wanted a child. I don’t really know. And guess what? I don’t really care.”
    I’ve heard most of this before—or pieces of it. But there’s something else, something new she’s telling me now.
    “Then—” I stare at Linda for a moment, open-mouthed. “Then who—”
    Linda sighs heavily and plops down on the bed. “Like I said, I don’t know anything for sure. Honestly, I couldn’t care less about that woman. But…I think probably her first husband took that picture.”
    I look back at the photograph. Justine seems sadder than ever. “You never told me she was married before!”
    “You never asked.” Linda sits cross-legged on her bed now and strips off her socks, the better to rub the soles of her aching feet. She rubs and rubs. “Anyway, what’s there to say? The past is the past.”
    “Who was he?” I drop down on the bed too, astonished. “Did they get back together?”
    It’s terrible, cruel, and I’ll never admit it to Linda, but I want my grandmother and this guy to have gotten back together. I want a love that lasts for once. I want that in my family, no matter the cost.
    Linda takes a deep breath like it’s all she can do to get the words out. “He was a soldier in World War Two.”
    I gape at her. “A soldier?”
    “Oh God. I should have known.” Linda presses her hand to her eyes. “He was killed, okay? He was some kind of hero. My mother left me for a ghost , Penelope. That’s what your grandpa always said.” Linda lowers her voice to a mannish, drunken slur and says, “‘Justine left us for a ghost.’”
    “She must have really loved him.” My voice has turned husky with emotion.
    “Oh, sure. That made it all worthwhile.”
    Linda sounds about as sarcastic as I’ve ever heard her. I stare at her, too shaken up to speak. She goes back to rubbing her feet, playing for time. When she looks up at me again, she seems sad.
    “I’m sorry.” She bites her lip. “Penelope, I’m just trying to take care of you. I’m just trying to keep you from getting hurt like I did—like my mother did, for that matter. Justine was eighteen when she married her childhood sweetheart. And one year later she was a widow. That’s not a happily-ever-after ending if you ask me.”
    I hold Justine’s photo close to my chest. “You don’t really know her side of it, though, do you?”
    Linda falls back on her bed, her coppery-gray hair