Free Once in a Lifetime by Danielle Steel Page B

constantly busy, but he needed even more attention than most, to be sure that he didn't run into danger from something he couldn't hear, and there was always his frustration to deal with, at not being able to communicate with others.
    When she closed her journal that night, she lay in the dark and thought again of Mrs. Curtis's suggestion. It was a good idea, and yet, she didn't want to write about Andrew. Somehow it seemed a violation of him as a person, and she didn't feel ready to share her own fears and pain. It was all too fresh, just as Jeff's and Aimee's deaths had been for so long. She had never written about that either. And yet she knew that it was all bottled up inside, waiting to come out, along with feelings that she hadn't faced in years. Those of being still young, and a woman. For four years now, her only close contact had been with her son. There had been no men in her life, and few friends. She didn't have time for them. She didn't want pity. And going out with another man would have seemed a betrayal of Jeffrey, and all that they had shared. Instead, she had submerged all of her feelings, locked all of those doors, and gone on year after year taking care of Andrew. And now there was no excuse left. He would live at the school, and she would be alone in their apartment. It made her never want to go back to New York. She wanted to hide in the cabin in New Hampshire forever.
    In the mornings she went for long walks, and once in a while she stopped at the little Austrian Inn for breakfast. The couple who ran it were well matched--both rotund and kind, and the wife always asked about her son. She knew why Daphne was there from Mrs. Curtis. As in every small country town, people knew who belonged and who did not, why they were there, when they had arrived, and when they were leaving. People like Daphne weren't so rare here, there were other parents who came to town to visit their children. Most stayed at the inn, and a few did what Daphne was doing, usually in the summer. They rented cottages and small houses, brought their other children with them, and generally made it a festive occasion. But Mrs. Obermeier sensed that Daphne was different. There was something much quieter, much more withdrawn, about this tiny, delicate, almost childlike woman. It was only when you looked into her eyes that you realized she was wise well beyond her twenty-eight years, and that life had not always been kind to her.
    "Why do you think she's alone like that?" Mrs. Obermeier asked her husband one day as she put sweet rolls in a basket and slid a tray of cookies into the oven. The cakes and pies she prepared made everyone's mouth water.
    "She's probably divorced. You know, children like that can destroy a marriage. Maybe she paid too much attention to the boy and her husband couldn't take it."
    "She seems so alone."
    Her husband smiled. His wife always worried about everybody. "She probably just misses the boy. I think Mrs. Curtis said he was very young, and he's her only child. You looked like that too when Gretchen went to college."
    "That wasn't the same." Hilda Obermeier looked at him, knowing that there was something he wasn't seeing. "Have you looked into her eyes?"
    "Yes," he admitted with a grin and a flush of his full jowls, "they're very pretty." He patted his wife's behind then and went outside to bring in some more firewood. They had a house full of guests at the inn that weekend. In the dead of winter there were always those who went cross-country skiing. And in the fall, people came from Boston and New York to see the changing of the leaves. But the brilliant orange and magenta leaves were almost gone now. It was November.
    On Thanksgiving Day, Daphne went to the school and shared turkey dinner with Andrew and the other children. They played games afterward, and she was stunned when he grew angry at her and signed to her, "You don't know anything, Mom." The rage in his eyes cut her to the quick, and she felt a