Free Promise Me A Rainbow by Cheryl Reavi Page A

instead, leaving his handprint on the beveled glass.
    Catherine watched him from the living-room window, looking down on him with a bird’s-eye view as he walked across the street to that same battered truck with the wheelbarrow in the back she’d seen earlier.
    Way to go, Holben , she thought. For someone who was supposed to be reasonably skilled in handling people, she’d done a remarkably poor job of it today. First Maria, and now Joe D’Amaro—when she knew better. In both instances, she had reacted to their behavior and not looked at the cause of it.
    “I’m too tired to look for causes,” she said aloud. “I’ve got troubles of my own.”
    Joe D’Amaro looked up as he got into the truck, and she moved away from the window. Tired or not, she had been concerned about Fritz, and she hadn’t been much help to her—except to put her father more on the defensive than he already was. She sighed heavily. This was exactly what she did not need.
    She went back into the kitchen, her still bare feet padding across the wooden floor. Perhaps Joe D’Amaro would have found her a little more credible if she’d put her shoes on. She stood for a moment in front of the sink, replaying in her mind what she should have said and done.
    But it was too late. She had missed her chance because she was tired and because Joe D’Amaro was defensive—and little Fritz wound up getting the short end of the stick.
    She roamed around the apartment, gathering up dirty laundry to take down to the basement. She was somewhat ashamed of her need to hurry past Mrs. Donovan’s screen door, but she didn’t want to have to elaborate on the number of irate men seen leaving her apartment of late.
    Mrs. Donovan was nowhere to be seen, though the now familiar scent of Lucky Strikes wafted out in the hall.
    Strange, Catherine thought as she passed. There was a time when she could have imagined herself trying to conjure up Jonathan’s memory, if she, like Mrs. Donovan, had been the one left behind. Of course, she had been the one left behind essentially. But by choice, not by chance and, unlike Mrs. Donovan, she had recovered from it. She must be recovered, or else she would have been grateful to have been asked to Jonathan’s wedding. Any crumb of attention would have been better than no crumb at all. If she was still in love with him, she’d want to go. She’d want his new friends to see what a civilized and understanding woman he’d given up. She’d want to justify Jonathan’s trust in her by her exemplary behavior toward his new wife—instead of wanting to give him a well-placed kick in the groin.
    She suddenly smiled. Another fine example of the difference between her fantasies and Pat Bauer’s.
    The laundry room was poorly lit, but she wasn’t afraid. She put her first load of clothes into the washing machine and went to sit by the door that led to the parking area underneath the building because the light was better. The parking area was mostly an empty expanse of concrete with oil spots because very few of the tenants had cars anymore. They were either like her—financially unable to resurrect an old and dying vehicle from its terminal disrepair—or they’d become physically unable to drive, or they’d never learned in the first place.
    She glanced out the glass-and-wire window in the door, squinting a bit at the shaft of sunlight that pierced the dark underpinnings of the Mayfair. Surrounded by the pleasant smell of hot, soapy water and the quiet rhythm of the washing machine, she reached into her pocket for Jonathan’s wedding invitation.
    She carefully studied the handwriting on the envelope—not Jonathan’s but Ellen Jessup’s, she supposed. The script was rounded and vertical, almost childlike with its small, carefully closed-up letters. She wondered how much Ellen had been pressured into believing that the two of them could be friends. Poor Ellen. She must have hated sending this, but Jonathan could be so persuasive and