Traveling Light Read Free Page A

except for Heavenly and Tony, Roger was the only person with whom she didn’t have to fake a laugh.
    She was enthralled by his electric blue eyes—alight from years of peering deep within the recesses of the universe, into the spaces between particles—and even more by how his penetrating gaze sought that which bound her together. From that first meeting on, his unusually intense stare made her knees relax and part ever so slightly. “The urge to merge,” he used to joke.
    Roger’s eyes were framed by white eyebrows, those you’d expect to see on Santa. After they’d make love Paula would run a finger over one and then the other in wonderment at their silky fur. She’d marveled at the tenderness in her heart. This was the shard that pierced—that he cherished her in a way her parents hadn’t, in a way no one had. She’d kneel on the couch on the lookout for Roger after he phoned from his office at Columbia saying he was on his way. Like a joy-struck, besotted dog at the window, twitching with anticipation for the first signs of her master. Even the sounds of Roger rummaging upstairs at all hours of the night in his vampire way were comforting. It was a landing spot she’d fought long and hard to find. And while she was prepared to do battle to make this one work, little had Paula known that Roger would require full surrender and retreat.
    And so it would be until the day she left for lunch and never came back.
    *   *   *
    The first time she stepped into the foyer of Roger’s brownstone she’d caught a whiff of musty basement odor. As Roger unlocked the door and stepped inside, he must have had second thoughts, and then turned, using his large frame to block Paula’s view.
    “Hey—what are you doing?” She’d chuckled and turned it into a game by poking him where she knew he was ticklish. As he ducked and grabbed his sides, she glanced past his shoulder, eager to see what he didn’t want her to. The cardboard boxes.
    “You moving?” It was an innocent enough question.
    “No.”
    She’d squinted in dim light to get a better look. “Looks like you are.”
    “Ummm … I’m just reorganizing—ignore all of this,” he issued the disclaimer, and seemed edgy. She’d never seen him unsure or tense.
    As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she panned the foyer. There was a lot to ignore. Boxes piled several high, stacks of academic journals, some to the top of her head.
    “Most of this was my parents’.”
    Peeking around the corner, she spotted a pile of folded Oriental rugs stacked on top of a piano (she could see the legs) so high they grazed the white plaster ceiling medallion. It looked like a madman’s warehouse.
    “I’m sorting,” he’d explained. “Cleaning—I hadn’t planned on company.”
    She looked at him. The comment stung. She was on the verge of saying, Hey, bucko, you invited me here, but didn’t. A self-imposed gag order set into motion with a silent agreement.
    “‘Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain,’” Roger deflected her with a joke. It worked; she laughed. “And don’t worry,” he said, looking deep into her with those eyes of his, “If we get married we’ll sort this all out and make it our place.” He’d lowered his face, his breath tickling her skin.
    “Marriage?” she joked, play-shoving him back. She then stepped onto the tops of his boat-like shoes, facing him as he began walking her out the door. She’d slipped her arms around his neck and drew him closer. “Who said anything about marriage?”
    And so she’d laughed along with her witty beau. Who keeps a tower of three-legged broken chairs, tangled and intertwined like a strand of DNA? A thick layer of frost-like dust like that doesn’t accumulate overnight? But like many women hopelessly mired in the throes of early hormonal love, Paula turned a deaf ear, instead hearing only refrains of “love will find a way” whirling about in her poor love-starved heart.
    The next ten years