In Love's Shadow [antikvár]

1The air was thin, brittle and still. It was the kind of winter evening that allowed sound to travel unimpeded. Bud knew it was a fact he should remember as he pulled his Mercedes into the drive of his Schaumburg home.The sun hung just above the horizon, but already the temperature had plummeted to below zero. It was going to be a bitter night, he thought as he walked up to the front door, snow crunching under his shoes.The neighborhood was unusually quiet. Bud assumed most everyone was shopping for last-minute Christmas gifts just like his wife, Roya.Roya.He stopped abruptly and looked at the house he'd built in the late seventies. For the first time, he was seeing it for what it was, what Roya had always said it was, "a monstrosity."But then, I didn't build it for Roya.He'd wanted so badly for it to be a replica of the grand estates he'd seen on the East Coast when he'd visited his sister, Daria, one summer in New York while she was attending Vassar. He'd wanted to fit in with her elegant society friends, women with aristocratic bone structure and impeccable clothes. Above all, he'd envied the careless ennui with which they viewed life and themselves.For Bud, life had always been an intense grapple between himself and the forces that continually tried to beat him into submission. A battle that, for the most part, the forces had won.