From the Heart

the moment the door was closed again. She’d forgotten, too, though he had scrawled notes and revisions in the margins, that she was reading Slade’s work. The story, the people, had completely taken her over.
    She traveled with an ordinary family through the postwar forties, through the simplicities and complexities of the fifties, into the sixties with their turbulence and fluctuating mores. Children grew up, values changed. There were deaths and births, the realization of some dreams and the destruction of others. Through it all, as a new generation coped with the pressures of the seventies, Jessica came to know them. They were people she might have met—undeniably people she would have cared for.
    The words flowed, at times gently, at other times with a grittiness that made her stomach tighten. It wasn’t an easy story—his characters were too genuine for that. He showed her things she didn’t always want to be shown, but she never considered setting the pages aside.
    At the end of a chapter Jessica reached automatically for the next page. Confused, she glanced down to see that there were no more. Annoyed with the interruption, she then realized she had read all he had given her. For the first time in almost three hours, the sound of Slade’s typing penetrated her concentration.
    There was a full moon. That, too, came to her abruptly. The light flowed into the room to vie with the stream of the bedside lamp. The fire Slade had lit when they’d come upstairs had burned down to glowing embers. Jessica stretched her cramped muscles, wanting to give herself a moment before she went into Slade.
    When she had insisted on reading his work, Jessica hadn’t been certain how she would feel or what she would say to him when she was finished. Knowing herself too easily influenced by emotion, she had been certain that she would find some merit in his writing. Now she wanted time to decide how much her feelings for Slade had to do with her feelings about the story she had just read.
    None, she realized. Before she had completed the first chapter Jessica had forgotten why she was reading it even though her main purpose had been accomplished. She knew Slade better now.
    He had a depth of perception she had only sensed, an insight into people she envied as well as admired. In his writing as well as his speech, he was frugal with words—but in the writing, his inner thoughts surfaced. He might be sparing with his own emotions, but his characters had a range to them that were rooted in their creator.
    And, Jessica mused, she’d been wrong when she had once told him he didn’t know women. He knew them—almost too well, she thought as she fingered the tip of a page. How much did he see, when he looked at her, that she had been confident was private? How much did he understand, when he touched her, that she had been certain she could keep hidden?
    Did he know she loved him? Instinctively Jessica glanced at the doorway that separated the bedroom and the sitting room. Slade’s typing continued. No, she was certain he had no idea how deep her feelings ran. Or, she thought with a small smile, that she was determined not to let him walk outof her life whenever, or however, things were resolved. If he knew, she mused, he’d put her at arm’s length. A cautious man, she reflected. Slade was a very cautious man—one who saw himself suited for the solitary life. Jessica decided that he had some surprises coming. When she felt her life was her own again, she was going to deal him a few.
    She rose and went to the doorway. His back was to her, the light falling on his hands as they moved over the keys. From the set of his shoulders, the angle of his head, she could tell his concentration was deep. Not wanting to disturb him, she waited, resting against the doorjamb. The ashtray at his elbow was half full, with a lit cigarette smoldering and forgotten. His coffee cup was empty, but his dinner tray hadn’t been touched. She felt a Betsy-like urge to scold him for neglecting to eat.
    This is how it could be, she realized abruptly, if the nightmare was behind us. He could work here, and I’d hear the sound of his typing when I came home. There’d be times he’d get up in the middle of the night and close the door so the noise wouldn’t wake me. We’d walk on the beach on Sunday mornings . . . watch the fire on rainy afternoons. One day, she thought and closed her eyes. It could happen one day.
    With an exasperated sigh,