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Authors: Kristina Riggle
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LUMPY TWIN BED IN IRINA’S old room, where Irina would have been sleeping if not for her surprise new husband. The room was years ago adapted into a studio of sorts for their mother, because its view of the harbor is apparently just the thing for doing yoga or chanting or whatever the hell.
She gives up on sleep again, her head fuzzy with insomnia, repressed rage, and too much Pinot. She flicks on a lamp and flicks open her cell phone. She’d surreptitiously added Tom’s phone number to her cell, under an entry called GYNO .
His message for her left at her mother’s house was perfectly bland and innocent. He told Mira “it’s the craziest thing, I could have sworn that was Kat driving by, though it’s been years, so it probably wasn’t.” And then he left his number and Mira couldn’tremember his exact wording that went with it, which is driving Katya insane in the wee hours of Saturday morning when she should be sleeping next to her husband in the hotel.
Did he say, “Please call?” Or “She can call if she wants to” or “I’d love to hear from her”? Her mother has no idea which and doesn’t understand why it matters.
It shouldn’t matter, Katya reminds herself. He’s an old boyfriend and you’re married with children and you’ve been driving by his house. She wonders if that’s considered stalking.
Katya walks to the window and looks out over the yard behind the house—just a dark expanse now, the night has gone cloudy—and the lights sprinkled around the harbor at piers and on back porches, and city lights in the park. A necklace of lights along the bridge connects the north and south ends of Charlevoix. She entertains a pleasant memory of making out with Tom in the grass, after the Venetian Festival fireworks, when he was supposed to have walked home, but instead hid out in the daylilies until everyone else went to bed.
Katya refuses to think, allowing her thumb to flip the phone open and hit buttons until a phone is ringing.
A baritone voice thick with sleep mumbles, “Hello”?
Katya snaps the phone shut and throws it on the bed, regarding it like a venomous snake.
Her face grows hot. So many people have Caller ID that his phone probably lit up with KAT’S KRADLE DESIGN or worse, KATYA PETERSON , and he’ll put that together with her drive by his house and run to the court for a restraining order.
Unless he would be glad to hear from her, assuming he can look past that whole stalker thing. She conjures him in memory, that athletic, wide-shouldered frame, blond hair that would never lie flat no matter how much he combed it, hazel eyes flecked with gold in the right light. She places her own arm across her chest andimagines his strong arms ringed around her waist on prom night.
Katya’s body is seized by wanting, a desperate wanting she hasn’t felt since…She walks to the door, double-checks the lock, and lowers herself to the futon, where she reaches down to her panties and pretends that she’s not pathetic at all.
CHAPTER 15
Mira
I STRETCH UNDER THE COVERS, ROLLING FROM ONE SIDE TO ANOTHER trying to trick my brain into thinking it’s comfortable, wooing sleep. I’m almost in a cocoon with the sheets tangled all around me. Max is moving more tonight in his sleep than he does on a typical day when he writes in front of his computer. He keeps raking his hand over his face. In a slight glow from the hallway night-light, I can see his nose wrinkle up. He may be grinding his teeth.
I’m struck with a sudden vision: Max alone in this bed. Will he still sleep on the left side? Will he move to the middle? Will he remember to change the sheets?
Dr. Graham comes to mind, talking to me with her carefully modulated voice, a smile meant to be reassuring, but not so big as to be inappropriate during a diagnosis of a dread disease. I noticed she was about my age, her silver hair cut short in a fringe just over her icy blue eyes. She’d been sketching a breast, and atumor, and lymph
She gives up on sleep again, her head fuzzy with insomnia, repressed rage, and too much Pinot. She flicks on a lamp and flicks open her cell phone. She’d surreptitiously added Tom’s phone number to her cell, under an entry called GYNO .
His message for her left at her mother’s house was perfectly bland and innocent. He told Mira “it’s the craziest thing, I could have sworn that was Kat driving by, though it’s been years, so it probably wasn’t.” And then he left his number and Mira couldn’tremember his exact wording that went with it, which is driving Katya insane in the wee hours of Saturday morning when she should be sleeping next to her husband in the hotel.
Did he say, “Please call?” Or “She can call if she wants to” or “I’d love to hear from her”? Her mother has no idea which and doesn’t understand why it matters.
It shouldn’t matter, Katya reminds herself. He’s an old boyfriend and you’re married with children and you’ve been driving by his house. She wonders if that’s considered stalking.
Katya walks to the window and looks out over the yard behind the house—just a dark expanse now, the night has gone cloudy—and the lights sprinkled around the harbor at piers and on back porches, and city lights in the park. A necklace of lights along the bridge connects the north and south ends of Charlevoix. She entertains a pleasant memory of making out with Tom in the grass, after the Venetian Festival fireworks, when he was supposed to have walked home, but instead hid out in the daylilies until everyone else went to bed.
Katya refuses to think, allowing her thumb to flip the phone open and hit buttons until a phone is ringing.
A baritone voice thick with sleep mumbles, “Hello”?
Katya snaps the phone shut and throws it on the bed, regarding it like a venomous snake.
Her face grows hot. So many people have Caller ID that his phone probably lit up with KAT’S KRADLE DESIGN or worse, KATYA PETERSON , and he’ll put that together with her drive by his house and run to the court for a restraining order.
Unless he would be glad to hear from her, assuming he can look past that whole stalker thing. She conjures him in memory, that athletic, wide-shouldered frame, blond hair that would never lie flat no matter how much he combed it, hazel eyes flecked with gold in the right light. She places her own arm across her chest andimagines his strong arms ringed around her waist on prom night.
Katya’s body is seized by wanting, a desperate wanting she hasn’t felt since…She walks to the door, double-checks the lock, and lowers herself to the futon, where she reaches down to her panties and pretends that she’s not pathetic at all.
CHAPTER 15
Mira
I STRETCH UNDER THE COVERS, ROLLING FROM ONE SIDE TO ANOTHER trying to trick my brain into thinking it’s comfortable, wooing sleep. I’m almost in a cocoon with the sheets tangled all around me. Max is moving more tonight in his sleep than he does on a typical day when he writes in front of his computer. He keeps raking his hand over his face. In a slight glow from the hallway night-light, I can see his nose wrinkle up. He may be grinding his teeth.
I’m struck with a sudden vision: Max alone in this bed. Will he still sleep on the left side? Will he move to the middle? Will he remember to change the sheets?
Dr. Graham comes to mind, talking to me with her carefully modulated voice, a smile meant to be reassuring, but not so big as to be inappropriate during a diagnosis of a dread disease. I noticed she was about my age, her silver hair cut short in a fringe just over her icy blue eyes. She’d been sketching a breast, and atumor, and lymph
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