From This Moment Read Online Free Page A

didn’t put them there. I don’t know where they came from, but we’d better check the other boxes. Where there’s one, there’s usually more.”
    She followed her landlord down the hallway. Mr. Zhekova was a mountain of a man, at least six feet tall, and he ate very well, so he waddled from side to side as he headed to the row of brass mail compartments. Her letter lay on the floor where she’d dropped it, and a single bee still circled the room. Mr. Zhekova used the newspaper to swat the single remaining bee to the ground, then stomped on it. He headed around to the narrow room behind the mailboxes to examine them from the other side.
    “Ha!” he shouted. “There is a bee’s nest in your box. Not in the others.”
    She ought to be relieved that none of the other people living here would be confronted with such a rude shock, but Mr. Zhekova was angry as he returned to the front room.
    “What did you put in your box to attract bees?” he demanded in his thickly accented Bulgarian voice. “Have you been storing food in there?”
    “Of course not!” Who stored food in a mailbox? But her landlord was not finished.
    “You are a woman,” he grumbled. “You wear perfume?”
    “Sometimes.” Actually, she wore perfume every day. Before leaving London, she’d stocked up on three bottles of her favorite orange blossom perfume, imported from Paris and sold for shocking prices. Indulging in the appallingly overpriced fragrance was one of the few luxuries she still allowed herself.
    “Well then, your perfume caused the bees,” Mr. Zhekova concluded.
    It was the most ridiculous statement she’d ever heard. She visited the mailbox once per day, with her hand inside it for no more than a second or two. It was hardly enough time to infect the mailbox with a flowery scent destined to attract bees from outside the building, down the hallway, and directly into her mailbox.
    But this wasn’t the first time something odd had happened to her. Two nights ago, a baseball had been hurled through her window. It was ten o’clock at night, and surely no children were still playing in the street. She lived on the fourth floor, so it would have taken a strong arm to get to her window, and thus it was hard to believe the baseball was a random accident.
    She’d told Mr. Zhekova about the baseball the next morning, and by the time she’d returned from work that day, theglass had been replaced. He’d been quite decent about fixing her window, but now he looked at her with clear disapproval.
    “Well, stop wearing perfume and maybe we’ll stop having bees in the building.”
    “Fine,” she mumbled. Her hand hurt too much to argue, and her legs were unsteady as she reached down to pick up her letter. She had done nothing to cause the bees—or the baseball, either. Perhaps someone in this boardinghouse did not like a woman rooming amid all the men? She hoped so, for the only other explanation was too frightening to contemplate. She was walking a dangerous tightrope in Boston, and the longer she could go about her business without attracting attention, the safer she would be.
    A glance at the letter showed that it was not from her parents, so it wasn’t urgent. She tucked it inside her bag and trudged up the stairs to her room.
    It was a plain room, with only a bed and a wardrobe in which to store her dresses. The single window overlooked an alley and had a depressing view of a brick building directly across the street.
    But she hadn’t come to Boston for a view. She’d come to salvage what was left of her family, but with each passing day, those golden, halcyon memories seemed farther away.
    The mattress creaked as she sat down. It was hard to open the letter with only one hand, but the blistering stings on her right hand hurt too badly to flex. Anchoring the envelope to her lap with her elbow, she tore the flap with her clumsy left hand and extracted the note inside, her brow lowering as she recognized the signature.
    How had