Promise Me A Rainbow Read Free

had no illicit lovers she needed to hide; she had no lovers at all.
    She entered, expecting Mrs. Donovan to give her a report on the mail delivery and the daily comings and goings. Mrs. Donovan had a bird’s eye view of the front door, the mailboxes, and the foot of the stairs. She was the sister of the woman who owned the apartment house, and she had the remarkable luxury of having both a wooden and a screen door to her apartment. The screen was ostensibly because Mrs. Donovan preferred a draft to a window-unit air conditioner. In actuality it was because, in the summer at least, Mrs. Donovan was the unofficial keeper of the Mayfair gates. Sometimes, when the draft was strong, one could smell the cigarette smoke wafting in from Mrs. Donovan’s apartment, not because she was a smoker but because she sometimes lit Lucky Strikes and blew the smoke around her living room to remind herself of her dead husband. Mr. Donovan had been gone for more than thirty years, but for Mrs. Donovan, with the help of a Lucky Strike and a nostalgic mind-set, he had only just left the room.
    The wooden door was closed today.
    Catherine checked her mail in the quiet downstairs foyer, tossing everything but the bills into a flowered trashcan that was kept close by. The stairs to the upper floors were wooden, layered in coat after coat of brown enamel paint and impossible to climb without making a racket. It occurred to her that unless a burglar confined himself to the ground floor, there was no need for the Mayfair to have any security. She climbed the stairs quickly, appreciating the stamina she’d acquired from living three flights up. When she’d first moved here, she’d had to rest at every landing. If one could believe clichés, she supposed that every cloud did have its silver lining and that her now strong legs and lungs were the direct benefit of having been forced to move to a cheaper place—that and the serenity she had gained from living at treetop level. She liked that about her apartment: that it was in the front and that the windows looked out onto the tops of the oak trees.
    “Catherine,” someone said as she climbed the last flight, the sound a bit distorted by the echo off the bare wood of the stairs.
    She looked upward; Jonathan sat on the top step. He never wore a raincoat or carried an umbrella, and he’d left a trail of wet footprints and rain droplets on the stairs.
    “You’re late,” he said, getting up. “I thought you got home a little after five.”
    “I don’t keep a schedule, Jonathan.” She shifted the purple box to her other arm so she could unlock the door, resisting for a moment when he took it from her.
    “No, I didn’t mean to imply that you did,” he said carefully. “What’s in the box?”
    “None of your business,” she said, because it was the only answer that might keep him from looking.
    He smiled, the smile boyish and winsome. She had always liked his smile, and a memory immediately surfaced, one of her lying in his arms on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
    She pushed the memory aside. “What do you want, Jonathan?”
    “I just wanted to see how you’re doing.”
    “I’m fine.” She opened the door and he followed her inside.
    “Are you?” he asked, and she glanced at him, suspecting that he came to see about her so often now because she really was fine and that he was willing to offer her the comfort of his presence now that he knew she was strong enough not to need it.
    She took the box out of his hands and set it on the table by the front door before she turned to meet his gaze. “Yes,” she said evenly.
    “I’m glad,” he answered, but he looked away. There was no mistaking his relief, his anxiousness to accept what she said as the truth. He gave a soft sigh, as if he were bracing himself for something.
    “Catherine . . .”
    “Jonathan, what is it?” she said sharply. She had known him long enough to know when he was filled with purpose, and she was still too emotionally