Long Time Coming Read Online Free Page A

intended for you to know about him or vice-versa. I don't want anything from you, especially money. So just go on about your business, leave me to mine, and forget that today ever happened. Thank you for the ride."
    She got out. At the door of the hospital, while she fumbled with the lock that she usually opened so deftly she wanted to turn and take a final, long look at him.
    It had been seventeen years since she'd last seen him. He'd waved them good-bye, then turned and jogged down the beach, looking like a young, vibrant sun god, golden and beautiful and destined for fame.
    Her breaking heart had said a secret good-bye to him then. She didn't now. She didn't allow herself the luxury of looking back before entering the sterile building.
    She remained in her mother's room for over an hour. During most of that time Mrs.
    Hibbs slept, waking up only occasionally to speak a few slurred sentences to Marnie.
    Despondent, Marnie left her. When she came out of the room, Law was pacing the hallway. The nurses at the station at the end of the hall were all atwitter, but he was paying attention to nothing save the gleaming tile floor as he walked to and fro like a caged lion.
    "You're still here?" Marnie asked. She was already feeling emotionally raw after the visit at her mother's bedside. Seeing Law upset her further.
    "How were you planning to get home?"
    "Taxi."
    He shook his head and escorted her to the nearest exit. "Taxis are unreliable in this town. You ought to know that." Minutes later they were once again in his Porsche with only the console and seventeen years between them.
    "How is your mother?"
    "She's dying."
    After a respectful pause he said, "I'm sorry."
    "They keep her medicated to minimize the damage of the little strokes she continues to have. Most of the time she's groggy. When she's lucid, she talks about my father and Sharon. She also cries a lot."
    "It was in Galveston, wasn't it?"
    "You mean when we met?"
    "It was on the beach, right?"
    "Yes," she said, wondering how much he remembered. "My family was renting a beach house close to the one your family was renting."
    Squinting through the windshield, he murmured, "There were two of you. Sisters."
    "My older sister, Sharon, and me, Marnie."
    "Sharon and Marnie. Yeah, I've got it now. Your sister was quite a looker."
    Marnie ducked her head slightly. "That's right."
    "You were just a kid."
    "Fourteen."
    "And your daddy was a preacher, wasn't he? I remember we had to sneak off to drink beer."
    "You talked Sharon into drinking some."
    He laughed. "But you wouldn't. Goody-two-shoes she called you."
    "I was never as adventurous as Sharon."
    He contemplated that for a moment, then remarked, "If Sharon slept with me, she probably slept with dozens of other guys."
    "She was only sixteen that summer. You were her first."
    "Sixteen? Sixteen ?" he repeated, his face going ashen. "I thought she was older than sixteen."
    "She looked older," Marnie said in a low voice.
    "She sure as hell did. Acted older too. Her attitude had left sixteen behind long before I met her. I remember how well she filled out the top of her bikini. She sure as hell didn't have a teenager's body."
    "I'm not arguing that," Marnie snapped. Irrationally it annoyed her that he remembered how well-endowed Sharon was. It didn't surprise her, of course, she just wished he'd stop referring to it.
    "But that's how old she was, sixteen. And turning up pregnant the first week of your junior year in high school can have grave repercussions especially if your father happens to be a well-known minister in the community."
    Law turned into the parking lot of a brightly lit coffee shop. "You look like you could use something to drink."
    "I'd rather you take me home."
    "Look," he said with diminishing patience, "you're shaken and upset. Wouldn't a Coke or a cup of coffee do you some good? For heaven's sake, I'm not asking you to get drunk or spend the night with me. Are you still such a goody-two-shoes that you can't