Free Private affairs : a novel by Judith Michael

note. He flushed in embarrassment "I can't help it if nobody feels like me."
    "We do feel like you," Elizabeth said. "But we also feel we have to make a choice. Can't you understand that? Isn't there anything you want to do now without waiting?"
    "Be an anthropologist and study Indians," Peter said promptly. "But you always say I have to go to college first, that I have to do things in the right order. Isn't that what Grandpa said he and Grandma did? Wait till the right time to buy their shop?"
    Elizabeth and Matt exchanged a glance, amused and exasperated, won-dering why parents' good advice often came back in a way they never expected. "It's close," Elizabeth admitted. "But not the same. A bookshop doesn't take the same time and energy as a newspaper; some jobs can't be started after a certain age. And I keep trying to tell you, Peter: the years are running away from us. We've waited sixteen years for this dream to come true. What if you had to wait sixteen years to be an anthropologist, or Holly had to wait that long to get a part in a Broadway musical?"
    "I'd die," Holly said simply.
    "Or learn to wait," Elizabeth said, smiling. "But then one day you'd say, 'Okay, it's now or never.' And you'd go after it."
    "Peter," Lydia said, "there's no such thing as absolute security. Maybe everybody should take a big chance at least once. Maybe everybody should be greedy for more, at least once."
    Elizabeth put her hand on Lydia's, feeling that from now on, they would be friends in a new way. "Thank you," she said, and kissed Lydia's cheek. "That means so much to me."
    "How about me?" Holly demanded. "I thought it was a good idea, too! I think you're as wonderful as Grandma does!"
    "And we thank you," said Matt. "We need you behind us."
    "Well, if it works, of course it would be . . . fine," rumbled Spencer, not wanting to be left out of what was clearly building to a vote of confidence. "And of course I'm behind you as much as Lydia; and we'll help with something, if things get really tight. ..."
    "Well, I can help too!" Peter exclaimed. "If you need money I'll sell my pottery collection—and get a job," he added with a dark look at his sister.
    Matt took Elizabeth's hand, feeling her slender fingers link with his. "We won't ask you to sell anything, Peter, or go to work just yet. All we want is your faith in us. That's all we want from all of you. Because we have faith in ourselves. We know we're going to make it." He looked at Elizabeth with love and anticipation, and put his arm around her shoul-

    ders. "When something is now or never," he told all of them, "and when you're working with someone you love, you don't hold back. You put everything you've got into it."
    Holly drew in her breath at the look on her parents' faces. A sharp pain went through her: envy, hope—and a fear that maybe no one would ever look at her like that. "When do we start?" she asked, trying to share in their intimacy.
    "In a couple of months," Elizabeth said. "When we close on buying the paper. October, probably. We start in October."
    As Matt's arm tightened around her, she looked around the table at her family. A warm breeze lifted a corner of the tablecloth; the lantern lights flickered. "We're so happy," she said. "We know what we're getting into, and we know that everything is going to be so wonderful, from now on."
    "Happily ever after," Holly said in a small voice.
    "Yes," Elizabeth said. "I guess it sounds silly, but that's exactly right. The two of us. Happily ever after."

    H A P T E R
    I
    .t was the beginning of the best time they had ever known: our golden time, Elizabeth called it, but softly, almost as if she were crossing her fingers, as she had in childhood, wondering how long it could last.
    Because it was also a time when they felt as if they had launched a small boat on a stormy sea, one minute riding high and confident, the next plunged into worries about the crazy chances they were taking. They signed large documents filled with