Love's Labyrinth Read Free

closely around her lightly freckled face, her eyes a dark gray-blue. Olivia, on the other hand, was petite, with dark hair that fell nearly to her waist, and an olive complexion she’d inherited from her Italian mother. They’d discovered each other in high school, when the extroverted Alison had taken the more reserved and quiet Olivia under her wing.
    “Under her wing” was a mild way to describe how Alison and her large Irish family had virtually adopted her, Olivia mused, thinking back to all the holidays and weekends she’d spent with the O’Neills. Her own father had insisted she accompany him on his summer sabbaticals, but he was relieved that Olivia had found a more congenial place to spend her Christmas and Easter breaks than the dusty, warm library of the house they inhabited during the school year. Content to stay in a residence provided for him by the university, he had never felt the need for a more permanent home. And in each other, the two girls had found the sister both had always wanted.
    Now, at twenty-four, the two women were still the closest of friends, though their lives were clearly taking opposite directions. Alison had just finished her M.S.W. and had started working in the public school system of New York. She was excited about her work helping young teen mothers and fathers. Olivia, on the other hand, had decided to finish her father’s final project before pursuing her own ambition to act. Her father’s death the previous year had left her with enough money to safely support herself for a few years. A successful career on the stage might be one shot in a million, she knew, but she owed it to herself to try, just as she felt she owed it to her father to finish his final legacy.
    Besides, in the years of working with her dad, she too had been intrigued by the mystery. It had been the works of William Shakespeare that had made her want to be an actress. No doubt her father, the renowned David Owen Lindsley, would roll in his grave at the thought of his daughter auditioning at theaters in the dregs of New York City’s off-off-Broadway streets. Professor Lindsley, three times a Ph.D., with eight languages to his credit—all dead ones—and a library filled with his own publications, had never encouraged or understood his daughter’s aspirations to act. Although he’d supported Olivia in her study of sixteenth-century playwrights, he’d never for a moment thought that a serious career could be made on the stage.
    She glanced up to see Alison slump further in her seat and swiftly cover her face with her open guidebook. “What’s wrong?”
    “He’s coming this way,” Alison hissed.
    Olivia looked up to see a young man in his late twenties coming down the aisle, two cameras hanging around his neck, his pasty complexion matched by his thinning blond hair. “Him?”
    “Yes, him,” Alison whispered. “In the pub he acted like I was his new best friend.” She fixed her eyes on the page and determinedly ignored the young man, who tried to make eye contact but was forced, by the press of other tourists, to take a seat farther back.
    “People love you, Allie,” Olivia murmured when the man had passed. “That’s why you’re such a great social worker.”
    Alison groaned and rolled her eyes as the tour guide, Mary Higgins, gave two short bursts on the whistle she wore around her neck. She had just enough time to mutter, “Let’s hope I can convince all those fourteen-year-old moms to talk to me,” when Mary Higgins held up her hand and began to speak. She had an interminably cheerful voice that seemed as though it would never falter, even when confronted by the most vexing of travel complications.
    “Listen carefully, everyone! We’ve got a schedule to keep!” The group began to quiet down, and faces peered ahead from both sides of the aisle. “Now, let’s see,” Mary continued. “We’ll arrive at Talcott Forest in just a few minutes. It’s only”—she gazed back at the