Free Identical by Scott Turow Page B

Hal. She didn’t sound pleased, but then again, she didn’t say no. Seemed to remember me.”
    “Who could forget you?” Evon asked. “Tall, dark and handsome.”
    He laughed. He was liking this Evon a good deal.
    The woman who greeted them at the door was barely recognizable to Tim. Age had been unkind to her, had coarsened her skin and stolen the life from it, and like many of the girls in this neighborhood, she’d put on an awful lot of weight. She had been pretty, as Tim recalled, very pretty, and looking close you could see the remnants of that cheerful appealing face within a pudding of flesh. Maria had gotten pretty hefty, too, truth be told, not that he had ever thought much about that. In a long marriage, the present matters less, at least it did to him. Every day they’d been together was there in both of them, good days mostly. But he could only see Georgia as she was, and her appearance seemed to say she’d lost all connection with the girl she’d been. There was just this person who looked much shorter now, in a droopy shirt and leaving you to wonder what illusions made her put on stretch pants.
    Tim reintroduced himself, mentioning neighbors he thought Georgia might recall, then asked how her father was doing. She made a face.
    “You’ll see,” she said. “He wanders around here like he’s on a treasure hunt. My biggest problem is to keep him from picking up the phone. He gets on with these solicitors from like the Police Benevolent Fund and talks for an hour and promises them thousands. I finally just had to give him a pad of checks from a closed account. He loves to write checks. The big shot.”
    She waved them into the dark living room. There were several beautiful icons on the wall, with their elongated flat look, and a lot of photos of Greece-the royal blue water and arid mountains-apparently taken on a family trip. Maria had wanted to go when the girls were young, but it was one more thing that got sucked under in the riptide after Katy’s death.
    After his own wife died, Father Nik was overwhelmed by all the work of the parish and had needed Georgia to stay nearby. He hadn’t thought much of a girl going off to college anyway. She’d gotten a year of bookkeeping training and still worked in the headquarters of the big bank where she’d started at nineteen, which was now owned by an even bigger bank. She was the chief teller, counting other people’s money from 7 to 3 every day.
    She brought them each a glass of water from the tap, then settled heavily on the print sofa. Evon sat beside her while Tim took an armchair. The TV was on and Georgia for a second couldn’t look away from some account of the latest goings-on with Britney Spears, who’d been hospitalized after locking herself in a room with her son.
    “What a runny mess she’s turning into,” Georgia said, “and with everything she’s got.” She continued to gaze, enthralled. Her attitude was just like the Greeks with their gods, Tim decided, looking in on the life that was bigger than life, these grand figures whose triumphs were the stuff of dreams and whose hubris led to destruction so complete it made you happy to be living small. When the show went to commercial, Georgia clicked it off. But she pointed at the TV, an old walnut console, with the remote.
    “I’ve been watching Hal’s ads,” she said, and her mouth soured. “I’m sure he sent you out here, thinking I’m the bitter old witch who’ll just crap on the guy who dumped her, but it’s not going to happen. I’ll tell you right now, I don’t believe Paul had anything to do with Dita’s murder.” The wide figure on the sofa tightened with these declarations, gripping her arms close to her body.
    “Can’t say I’m surprised to hear that,” Tim answered. “You wouldn’t have spent all that time with somebody you figured for a murderer, right? But now and then people have another side nobody sees. Hal’s got his opinions and Paul decided to sue