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MARY VENSEL WHITE
The Qualities of Wood
Copyright
Authonomy
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
THE QUALITIES OF WOOD. Copyright © Mary Vensel White. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Mary Vensel White asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Source ISBN: 9780007523580
Ebook Edition © JANUARY 2012 ISBN: 9780007469505 Version: 2015-02-09
Dedication
For Jason, for everything
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
Thanking
About the Author
About Authonomy
About the Publisher
1
In the small, congested airport, Vivian didn’t recognize her husband. Summertime. Outside, the sun beamed white on the runway and grassy fields. Inside, the terminal was stuffy and warm. Vivian passed a group of brightly-clothed summer travelers, this haze of blue, pink, yellow and green, and walked slowly along an eye-level, smudged window and into the crowded inlet beside the gate, all the while hunting for Nowell. Somehow, she walked right by.
She imagined the terminal was normally empty, the surrounding community being rural and unworldly. But it was the season of vacations: eastern hometowns, tropical beaches, exotic cities. Not everyone was headed to an abandoned house in the country, she thought. The travelers dispersed purposefully, trailing loved ones or heading solo toward the cars parked in rows at the front of the building. Vivian was pulled along with the crowd. Nowell was late. At first she felt irritated but quickly dismissed the feeling. It was a reunion, she reminded herself.
A large hand gripped her shoulder and she spun around.
‘Where are you going?’ Nowell’s deep voice. His dark eyes.
‘I couldn’t see you,’ she said. She reached up for him, grasped his shoulders as though to pull herself up. ‘I didn’t see you.’
On the way to the house, she soaked him in: the shadowed gash of his cheekbone, his ruddy lips. Nowell kept his hand on her thigh. His touch felt curiously foreign after their four-week separation, but it ignited something too.
The drive wasn’t long, the countryside a blur of sameness. Fields of indecisive green, hills falling short of remarkable. Here and there a white or brown-shingled house, some shadowed by barns. The predictable Midwest.
Nowell’s hand left her leg to steer the car onto a dirt driveway. ‘What do you think?’ he asked.
Vivian peered through the windshield. The small, white house was set back from the road and elevated slightly, like a judge on his bench. The sun lit the house from behind. White with dark green trim, there were wide strips of paint missing altogether; these sections of bare wood gave the impression of something bursting its seams. Two narrow windows gazed at the newcomers and beneath them, a bluish shadow stretched, tongue-like, down the front steps and onto the lawn.
‘It looks stable,’ Vivian said.
He chuckled. The truck made a strange revving sound after he removed the key. ‘Just the timing,’ he told her.
Vivian nodded. She knew the truck was like the house, old and in disrepair. Nowell had traded in their Honda when he left the city. They gave up the lease on their apartment and he moved first to arrange things. For a month, Vivian stayed at her parents’ house, working at her job for a couple more paychecks. It was the longest they had ever been apart.
She
