Finding Ashley by Danielle Steel (free ebook reader for iphone txt) 📗

with her work. She had removed all the old coats of paint, and had decided to varnish it instead. The original carvings and moldings were delicate and beautiful. You could see them better now. All she cared about was improving the house. It was a living being to her, her only friend.

After her morning’s labors, she made herself a cup of coffee and stood drinking it, looking out past the lawn and the trees, and the gardens she had created, to the orchards in the distance. They harvested the apples and sold them at a local farmer’s market. She had the time and the money to do what she wanted and what she enjoyed. After five astoundingly successful bestselling books, she had enough money saved to live as she chose. She led a simple, uncomplicated life, and had more than enough in the bank. Two of her books had been sold as movies.

For a while, she’d been one of the country’s most successful writers, and then she disappeared from public life, to the dismay of her publishers. Carson hated to see her waste her talent. But now, working on her house and property interested her more.

She hadn’t been back to New York since she bought the house, and said she had no reason to. She had let friends fall by the wayside after Robbie’s death, and purposely avoided them. She didn’t want to hear about their children, or see them, most of whom were teenagers now, as Robbie would have been. At forty-nine, she knew there would be no more children in her life. Robbie had been the center of her universe, just as Carson had been, but that was all over now.

Once in a while, she contemplated how odd it was never to experience human touch anymore. There were none of the adoring hugs as Robbie wrapped his arms around her neck and nearly choked her in his exuberance, or the gentle, sensual passion she and Carson had shared. She wasn’t close enough to anyone now to have them hug her, or embrace them in return. Now and then someone working for her would touch her shoulder or her arm, or her contractor, Norm, who was a friendly guy, put a hand on her back. It always startled her. It wasn’t a familiar sensation anymore, nor a welcome one. She didn’t want to remember what that felt like. Physical contact with other humans was no longer part of her life, even though it had been important to her before. In their early years, Carson considered her a warm person. And Robbie would respond to her saying “I want to give you a hug” by leaping into her arms, and nearly knocking her down to hug her. He had been a sturdy, happy boy, until he became too weak to walk or even raise his head, and she would sit beside him holding his hand until he fell asleep. In the end, he slept most of the time, as she watched him, making sure he was still breathing, and savoring every instant he was alive.

“You can’t cut yourself off from everyone!” Carson had warned her after Robbie died, but she had. She had survived the worst that life could dole out to her, losing her only child. She wasn’t the same person anymore, but she was still standing and functioning. She used to love to laugh. Hattie had been livelier and more mischievous as a child, but Melissa had a good sense of humor. There had been no sign of it since Robbie got sick. The immensity of the loss had changed her.

She rose early every morning and watched the sun come up, and then got busy with her day, doing whatever work was at hand, and she often went to bed soon after dark. She read at times, and liked to sit by the fire relaxing and lost in thought, but the memories snuck up on her then. She didn’t like giving herself time to think and drift back to the past, and avoided it. She was living in the present, and her present was the house she had restored, mostly by the work of her own hands. She was proud of the results and what she had achieved. The house was living proof of how far she had come since she had bought it, and a symbol of her survival. No one in the area knew how hard she had fought to cling to life and not give up when she’d lost the person she loved most. Working on the house had brought part of her back to life, and kept her busy, happy, and fulfilled for four years. It was her therapy and had become one of the handsomest homes in the Berkshire mountains, with exquisite handcrafted workmanship. In its own way, it was a work of art. To Melissa, the house was alive, a living being to be cherished and embellished, and had become her reason for staying alive.

She let herself think of her sister, Hattie, sometimes, with her fiery red hair and huge green eyes, like a pixie when she was a child. Her copper hair was hidden under her nun’s veil now. She had been a tomboy, and then blossomed into a beautiful young woman with a natural, striking beauty men were drawn to. Boys pursued her even when she was a teenager. Melissa, with dark hair and blue eyes, had a cooler beauty and seemed less approachable. When Melissa went to Columbia, she was more concerned with taking care of her sister than meeting men. She never dated until her junior year.

When Melissa graduated from college and got a job, Hattie was sixteen and a beautiful, voluptuous young woman by then. All the boys at the school she went to in New York were crazy about her, which made it all seem even more absurd when Hattie decided to become a nun. She had always been the boy-magnet of the two of them