A Wedding in December_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [0]
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Little, Brown and Company
Hachette Book Group, USA
237 Park Avenue , New York, NY 10017
Visit our Web site at www.hachettebookgroupusa.com
First eBook Edition: October 2005
ISBN: 978-0-316-02425-9
Contents
Friday
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Saturday
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Sunday
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Acknowledgments
About the Author
ALSO BY ANITA SHREVE
Light on Snow
All He Ever Wanted
Sea Glass
The Last Time They Met
Fortune’s Rocks
The Pilot’s Wife
The Weight of Water
Resistance
Where or When
Strange Fits of Passion
Eden Close
for my father
Friday
The glaciers are receding,” she said. Nora peered through the window as if she could see the progress of said glaciers some ten thousand miles north. “I read it in the paper. This morning.”
The view, Harrison had noted before he’d sat down, was of still-green lawns and dormant rosebushes, of a wrought iron fence and a garden bench, of ornamental grasses and white pines. Beyond the considerable acreage was a steel ribbon of river and beyond that a range of mountains, blue-gray in the morning light.
“The birds must be confused,” he said.
“They are. I . . . I see them flying north all the time.”
“Is it bad for business?”
“No. Not really. No one’s canceled. Though the ski areas are suffering.”
Nora left the window and moved to the chair opposite. He watched her cross her legs, a cuff riding just above the edge of a black leather boot and making a slim bracelet of smooth white skin. Harrison superimposed the woman he saw now over the memory of the seventeen-year-old girl he’d once known, a girl with a soft face and large almond-shaped eyes, a girl who had been graceful in her movements. The woman before him was forty-four, and some of the softness had left her face. Her hair was different, too. She wore it short, swept behind her ears, a cut that looked more European than American.
When they’d met just moments earlier at the foot of the stairs in the front hallway, Nora had been standing at a small reception desk. She’d glanced up and seen Harrison, and for a moment she’d examined him as an innkeeper might a guest one had not yet attended to. Harrison, she’d said then, advancing, and his own smile had begun. As Nora had embraced him, Harrison had felt both unnerved and buoyant—a cork floating in uncharted waters.
“Your . . . your room is comfortable?” she asked.
He remembered this about her. The slight stutter, as if hesitant to speak. No, not a stutter; more a stutter step.
“Very,” he said. “Great views.”
“Can I get you something? Tea? Coffee?”
“Coffee would be fine. That’s quite a machine there.”
“It makes espresso with a lot of crema,” she said, standing. “It’s a draw, actually. Some of the guests have said they’ve come back for the coffee in the library. Well, for that and for the dumbwaiter. I put the dining room upstairs. To take advantage of the views.”
On either side of the bookshelves were half columns, and below those shelves were cabinets. On one wall, there was a built-in bench upholstered in lichen stripes. The windows—a set of three facing west—had panes in the tops only, so that from the leather couch on which Harrison was seated he had an unobstructed view of the mountains.
“How long has this been an inn?” he asked.
“Two years.”
“I was sorry to hear about your husband.”
“You sent a card.”
He nodded, surprised that Nora remembered. There must have been hundreds, perhaps thousands, of cards for such a distinguished man.
“Renovations,” she said, making a gesture so as to take in the entire building. “Renovations had to be made.”
“You’ve done a terrific job,