Free Snapper by Felicia Zekauskas, Peter Maloney Page B

could even give it a quick look!”
    What a difference a voice made! Yesterday, she was a lioness ready to decapitate Judd just for asking to take a peek. Today, she was a lamb, ready to open her books to a total stranger.
    While Deena was keeping August on the line, Judd paced back and forth in front of his window. He had tried to call Deena – he’d found the phone number of the Andersen cabin in the Turtleback Lake directory – but the line had been busy – both times he called. Who could she possibly be talking to for so long? So much for all of Deena’s talk about wanting to remain reclusive and ‘incommunicado.’
    As Judd stewed, Deena was feeling a strange exhilaration from the conversation she had just concluded. Though she was usually drawn to a certain physical type, she had always had a hankering for something completely different: a tweedy, Volvo-driving, Ivy League-ish intellectual with patches on the elbows of his herringbone jacket and tortoise shell glasses framing probing, intelligent eyes.
    Deena’s imagination had already turned August’s voice into the embodiment of just such a man. Maybe tomorrow this elusive intellectual would finally walk into her life. But she was getting ahead of herself. She had to hold her horses. She had to remember what she was here for. Not for a man – even if he was Mr. Right. She was here for a doctor – a Dr. in front of her name.
    Deena was reminding herself of her priorities when the phone started ringing again. Instead of dispelling the last bits of her reverie, it stirred them up again. It was probably Professor Andersen calling back with something he’d forgotten to tell her. She reached for the receiver.
    “Hello,” she cooed.
    “Well you’re a hard one to contact.”
    At the sound of Judd’s voice, anger flooded back into Deena.
    “And so?”
    “So nothing,” said Judd, wondering why Deena was so quick to anger. “It’s just that I’ve just been trying to call you and the phone’s been busy – for quite a while.”
    “And?”
    “And nothing,” said Judd. “I was just a little surprised after what you said about wanting solitude and seclusion.”
    This was absolutely too much! Deena did not know Judd’s little broker trick for calming down by counting backwards from ten to zero.
    “Look, Judd – I don’t think I have to explain to you or anyone what I’m doing on the telephone.”
    “Whoa!” said Judd. “I didn’t mean anything. I just called because after yesterday I was just kind of hoping that maybe we could do something today – maybe go out to dinner or something.”
    Deena had made up her mind even before Judd was finished. Yesterday clearly had been a mistake. She wasn’t going to repeat it – at least not with Judd.
    “Look, Judd, I’m sorry, but yesterday was yesterday. Starting today, there’ll be no more yesterdays. I’ve got to get back to what I came here for. I’m sorry, but that’s it. Goodbye.”
    Then she hung up the phone.

Chapter 13
    PATERSON 1928
    The only thing positive to be said about Owen Andersen losing his hand was this: it was his right hand.
    For most people, this would have been bad news. But not in Owen’s case. Owen was that one in ten: he was a lefty.
    And Owen was the kind of man who played whatever hand life dealt him. He saw no point in bemoaning what fate had taken away. He simply set himself to the task at hand.
    Now, Owen was at work on a new set of drawings.
    Each night after Wilhelmina and Isaac went to bed, he sat for hours at the kitchen table – sketching, erasing and revising. He obsessed over his drawings like an engineer or an inventor. In the morning, his wife and son found no signs of how he had spent the late night hours. The plans he was drawing were out of sight, rolled up in a tube, leaning against the back wall of a closet.
    The loss of his right hand did cause one particular inconvenience. Owen could no longer work the car’s gearshift. So he taught Isaac how to