Free An Act of Love by Nancy Thayer Page B

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    “No suspensions from school. Nothing but glowing remarks from your teachers. So what’s up? I mean, come on, help me out here.”
    “Maybe it’s something in the future.”
    “I see. Something that hasn’t happened yet, but will. Something bad, planted inside you.”
    Emily nodded. “Like a time bomb.”
    He looked sad. Shaking his head, he said, “What an awful burden you are bearing, carrying a time bomb within you, thinking you are the only one who can avert disaster.”
    Emily wrapped her arms around her stomach. “I don’t want to talk any more.” Pain was swelling through her stomach and chest. “Please.”
    Dr. Brinton stared at her a while, considering. When he looked at his watch, Emily felt oddly offended.
    “All right. It’s almost time for the fitness hour anyway. We’ll talk again tomorrow.” He rose. “I’ll escort you to the exercise room.”
    He rose, a tall, ungainly, Ichabod Crane of a man, all bones and joints. It couldn’t have been easy for him as a boy. He could never have been handsome. He couldn’t help having that bulging forehead, those little eyes. She thought of Kafka’s story they’d read part of in school, where the man turned into a cockroach. Dr. Brinton was like a cockroach turned into a man. He was hideous, as she was, and still a human being. There was almost comfort in that thought.

Chapter Eight
    “Hey, Mrs. McFarland!”
    Owen had dropped Linda at Hedden, and as she entered Bates Hall, Bruce’s good friend Pebe lumbered down the stairs toward her, a bulging backpack over his shoulders.
    “Looking for Bruce?”
    “Looking for Jorge, actually.”
    Pebe seemed surprised. “I think he’s in his room. Want me to tell him you’re here?”
    “That would be great.”
    “You can wait in the lounge if you’d like.”
    “I’ll do that.”
    The lounge was a beautiful room, with long casement windows, a fireplace ornamented with marble wreaths and vines, mahogany paneling, a parquet floor. Over the years it had been democratized by its furnishings: several sofas and armchairs sagging and misshapen from use, card tables set up among the claw-footed antiques.
    Crossing to the window, Linda gazed out at the lawn sweeping out to the woods, crisscrossed by streaks of shadow.
    “Mrs. McFarland?”
    Jorge entered, wearing khakis and a white button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up over his muscular forearms. His black hair was freed of its band today and hung down around his face in an ebony curtain that partially obscured his puffy, blackened right eye but could not hide his split, swollen lip.
    Linda shook his proffered hand. “Thanks for coming down, Jorge. I won’t take up much of your time.”
    “How is Emily?”
    “She’s going to have to stay in the hospital a while. We don’t know what her problem is. Can you help us?” When he didn’t answer at once, she gently pressed, “Anything. We would be so grateful.”
    Jorge leaned one hip on the windowsill. The sun fell over his face like a spotlight.His gaze was clear, direct. “I don’t know if this is significant.”
    “Tell me.”
    “Well. Last spring Emily and I became friendly. She’s really nice, Emily. Really smart.” His face softened. “We hung out together. We wrote a few times over the summer. Then this fall, we hung out together again. Saturday night, there was a dance here, and we danced. Then Sunday night we decided to meet in the woods for a cigarette—” Jorge glanced at Linda, judging how much this particular bit of information disturbed her.
    “Go on.”
    “Everyone does it. I mean, smokes, or if you’re part of a couple …” Jorge fiddled with his watchband, unfastening it and fastening it as if it were too tight. Looking at his wrist, he said, “I kissed her. She kissed me back. She wanted me to kiss her, I mean, she wouldn’t have gone to the woods with me if she didn’t. I mean, that’s why we go to the woods, everyone knows that.” Color was spotting his