Read While He Was Away for Free Online Page A

fanning across the purple spread. “Let sleeping dogs lie, all right, honey? Just let sleeping dogs lie.”
    I don’t know if Linda means Justine or the soldier or the past altogether. I don’t know if Linda means herself, lying there, eyes closed already, lips parted in utter exhaustion. I only know that it’s time to get the heck away from her.
    So I do, taking the photograph with me. I’ll never tell Linda about the loose floorboard in the attic and, when I know, what’s beneath. Never ever.
    In my room, I face the clock on my desk. David leaves at one in the afternoon. About ten hours from now.
    I prop Justine’s picture against the clock. I had a grandmother who loved a soldier too. He died. But maybe she still exists?
    I lie down on my bed, willing myself to rest up for the worst day of my life. So far.

Four
     
    When I look at the clock again, it’s nearly ten.
    David isn’t outside waiting in the shade of the honey locust tree. He hasn’t left a voice mail or sent a text. No Facebook updates. He hasn’t said one last good-bye. I call his cell, but he doesn’t answer. His house. No one picks up there either.
    On my desk, Justine seems to nod in the flickering sunlight. Find him , her expression seems to say. Now .
    I peek into Linda’s room. Still fully dressed in her black work garb, she is sprawled facedown and spread-eagled on her bed. This is the way Linda sleeps when she’s really wiped out from work or me, or both. There’s no danger that I’ll wake her.
    I clean up fast. I get on my bike.
    Usually I’d wave to the clockwork lady, who is picking her delicate way around the block. But this time I don’t think to raise my hand until after I’ve sailed past her. I don’t look back to see whether she hesitates the way she always does when she sees me, whether she unclasps her own hands to wave back—her gesture more question than answer.
    Bonnie doesn’t know where David is. “He left about an hour ago, I think—about nine. He promised he’d be back for a late breakfast. I went out and got chocolate-chip bagels and cream cheese—his favorite. He was expecting you. And here you are!” Bonnie forces a smile and runs her fingers through her spiky blond hair.
    When I pulled up on my bike a few minutes ago, she was standing in the driveway, looking down the street as if David might appear at any moment. She had her hand to her forehead, shielding her blue eyes. She said the sun was hurting them—that’s why they were so red and watery. But I could see at once that she’d been crying.
    We stand in the O’Dells’ kitchen now. It’s still a mess from the dinner Bonnie made last night, which was not a culinary success. The lasagna and garlic bread burned. The Fresh Express salad wilted in the bowl. The soda frozen in the freezer. Bonnie, forced to copy umpteen files, had stayed too late at her real-estate office to pull off anything more gourmet. And she had so wanted to pull off something memorable—in a good way. So had Beau. David’s dad kept our conversation moving right along, peppering every other sentence with a silly joke or bad pun. Beau wasn’t about to let anyone break down. He wanted to remember everyone—especially his son—smiling.
    Any assumptions I’d had about adoptive families went out the window the moment I met David, Bonnie, and Beau. They have their differences, sure. But they get over their differences—or if not over, exactly, then past . They see each other as individuals, not just extensions of themselves or their history. Like right now, if David is late for breakfast, Bonnie will probably say, “David will be David.” She’s right. David makes a habit of late. That’s one of the many reasons why he decided to enlist.
    “I need the structure,” he’s told me more than once. “I gotta learn some organizational skills.”
    I seize a suspicious-smelling, damp rag from the O’Dells’ notoriously clogged sink and start swiping at the counter.
    “Do you