Free The Glass House People by Kathryn Reiss Page A

that evening would bring him back to the Savages, to their spotless home. He rode the train back from the zoo, then caught a bus. Normally the walk from the bus stop to the old house on Spring Street, where he had lodgings with the family, was his chance to daydream, to unwind after a long day. His daydreams generally focused on the novel he was writing—well, trying to write—at night up in his room. The plot was great—better than any of the science fiction junk he'd ever read. The classic writers had nothing on him. Even his favorite writers, Jules Verne and Isaac Asimov, paled beside him. When he sat down at his old typewriter out there on the little sunporch that came with the bedroom, he entered a world of time travel, space exploration, new planets discovered around new suns, and thrilling tales of war. Clara Savage, his landlady and soon-to-be mother-in-law, often had a very hard time pulling him out of that world when dinner was waiting on the table. Lately, of course, concentrating on that other world had become more and more difficult.
    Who would have thought he would fall in love! And with such a beautiful, fascinating woman! He still couldn't get over it. He had once believed there could be only one person in the whole world who was truly right for him—his soul mate, his anima. And he believed he had met her while he was in college.
    She'd been a waitress at the café near campus, not a student herself, but a seeming waif—a thin, pale beauty named Abby, who had few connections and lived, as he did, in a rooming house near the campus. He had been twenty. She swore she was eighteen, but she looked fifteen. He hadn't complained. They'd dated for two years, until he graduated and felt ready to marry her. But two years hadn't changed Abby a bit; she still looked fifteen, was still elusive and vague when he tried to pin her down to a date when they could be married. He had complained bitterly then. After all, he was quite a catch, wasn't he? Not rich, of course, but a great writer, which was nearly the same thing—he would be rich in a few years' time, once his books started to sell.
    One evening two weeks before Christmas, after they'd finished dinner together in the café, Abby handed him a present. She made him promise not to open it until Christmas. He agreed to wait. Then, suddenly, she'd said she had to go and left him sitting there in the café. He finished his dinner, then went back to their rooming house. But Abby wasn't in her room. He figured she must have gone out for a walk—she didn't really have any other friends that he knew of—but, although he waited until quite late, she didn't return. He remembered the present she'd given him and decided to open it then and there.
    It was a collection of science fiction time-travel stories he had been eyeing in a bookstore the previous week. And there was a letter enclosed:
Clifton,
    I really do care about you, but I
don't
want to marry you. I'm leaving Philadelphia. Don't worry about me. Good luck. I will look for your books.
    Abby
    His first thought was that she hadn't even signed the note "Love, Abby"—just "Abby." His second thought was that she clearly was not his soul mate after all. Soul mates just didn't run off like that. So he never thought of trying to find her. As Christmas drew nearer, he half-expected a card from her, but none came, and after that he rarely thought of her. He immersed himself in his writing, working at odd jobs to support himself. A few years later his rooming house began to seem crowded, full of students much younger than himself, and he decided it was time to find a new place. He'd moved into the house on Spring Street and met Iris. And thoughts of Abby never crossed his mind again.
    Talk about soul mates! He was drawn to her from the start, but his first Christmas with the family had been the turning point. As the holidays approached, he noticed he was spending less and less time at his