On Love's Own Terms Read Online Free Page A

pregnancy to her parents. Later, she’d sat alone here, sobbing out the hurt, sorting out the uncertain future.
    Methodically, Bonnie finished preparing the coffee tray and carried it into the living room. Dave sat in the overstuffed recliner, paging through a sports magazine. Darlene knelt in front of the entry-hall chest, rummaging for something in the bottom drawer. Luke stood staring out the bay window, his broad shoulders backlighted by the scarlet rays of a stunning sunset.
    “Who wants coffee?” Bonnie set the silver tray on the low table in front of the sofa, then perched on a cushion to pour. Dave accepted a cup; Darlene said she’d fix her own in a few minutes.
    Bonnie glanced up at Luke’s unyielding silhouette. If only he’d cooperate! “Let’s see,” she began in an optimistic voice, “you drink yours black if I remember correctly.”
    He spun around, his stubborn expression exterminating her hopes for a halfway pleasant evening.
    “I found them!” Darlene proclaimed with a laugh. Holding a small cardboard box, she fairly waltzed across the room and plopped down beside Bonnie. “It’s your half of the family photographs. Mama divided them before she died and put yours away for safekeeping.” She lifted the lid off the box. “Let’s have a look at them.”
    Bonnie and Darlene browsed through the photographs, taking a sentimental visual journey through childhood and adolescence. Dave continued reading. Luke kept his distance.
    “Lord love a duck!” Darlene hooted, closely inspecting one of the pictures. “Where did you get this steel-wool hairdo?”
    “Don’t you remember the hell I raised when mama gave me that home permanent and left the waving lotion on too long?” Although Bonnie could laugh about it now, it hadn’t been a bit funny at the time. “I cried three days straight and refused to leave my room. Finally, to shut me up, daddy drove me to his barber and told him to keep cuffing until the frizz was gone. The guy practically scalped me!”
    “I loaned you my baseball cap,” Luke recalled out of the blue, “and you wore it everywhere for a solid week.”
    Bonnie looked up at him, and their gazes locked. For a wonderful moment time reeled in reverse, erasing old sorrows and wrapping them in the sweet cocoon of youth. Darlene stood. Luke walked over and claimed her place on the sofa.
    “When I took the cap off Danny Tyler called me a skinhead, and you punched him in the nose.”
    Luke chuckled. “The next day you brought me a batch of chocolate chip cookies you’d baked—all of them burned black as pitch on the bottom.”
    “You ate them.”
    “Every last crumb.”
    Unnoticed, Darlene and Dave left the living room.
    “Will you just look at these?” Bonnie asked rhetorically. She scooped the entire pile from the box and set them on her lap. “Why, I’ll bet you’re in every other picture.”
    “Let’s see.” Luke slipped his arm around her shoulders and leaned closer.
    Dusk fell as softly as a down comforter. Together, they examined the photographs and traded the souvenirs they had saved in their minds and hearts. Bonnie groaned occasionally in embarrassment. What a skinny creature she’d been—her legs looked just like matchsticks in this one! Luke’s frequent laughter reverberated vibrantly in her ears. Whatever had happened to all those baseball trophies he’d won in school? Probably serving as door-stops all over town, thanks to his mother’s famous rummage sales.
    When they came to the pictures taken during their marriage, they both lapsed into silence. Here she’d mugged for the camera while he’d pointed at her bare feet with one hand and the small but definite bulge of her belly with the other. There, after her miscarriage and the quarry closing, Bonnie’s eyes were deep pools of pain and Luke’s grim expression seemed chiseled from stone. There’d been no reason for either of them to smile.
    On the brink of tears, Bonnie gathered her composure while