The Catswold Portal
Chapter One
He ran pounding through the forest, his tennis shoes snapping
dry branches as he stretched out in a long lope. Running
eased the tightness, the tension. He was tall and lean,
dark haired. Dodging between the broad trunks of redwood
trees he headed uphill toward the mountain, swerving past
deadfalls, trampling ferns that stroked his bare legs like animal
paws. Strange thought, Alice's kind of thought, animal
paws. He shivered, but not from the cold. It was dusk; Alice
would be cleaning up, putting away her paints, washing her
brushes, thinking about dinner, wondering whether to go out
or open something. She wouldn't speak to him while he was
still working, would go out to the kitchen and stand looking
in the freezer.
She would have done those things. Had done them, once.
The pain ran with him, he couldn't shake it, couldn't leave
it alone.
Months after the funeral he had started to heal, to mend,
the hurting began to dull, some feeling returning besides
rage and grief. But now suddenly his pain was raw again, the
last few days were as if her death had just happened, her
body in the wrecked car ... He swerved away from the
ravine and ran steeply up between boulders, but at the foot
of Mount Tamalpais he turned back ... read full excerpt from: The Catswold Portal ebook
