Read Online Remember Mia by Alexandra Burt - Free Book Online Page A

was dumbfounded by the woman I had become. No longer a woman, really, but a crone, in baggy clothes and stringy hair with a chilly, triumphant cackle. I knew I was helpless, for the crone’s powers were infinite.
    Seconds after I began pounding the door with my fists, Jack ripped it open, looked at me, with surprise at first, then his eyes turned into rage. I didn’t speak, just turned and ran. I reached my car, shaking, unable to think, but I managed to drive home. When I pulled into the driveway, I was surprised I had made it there.
    Aashi, the sitter, was asleep on the couch in Mia’s room. A medical student from India, chronically sleep deprived yet easygoing and patient with Mia’s colicky behavior, she smelled of cardamom and anise and her upper lip appeared darker than the rest of her face. My hand still hovered over her shoulder when she opened her eyes.
    “Mrs. Connor, she didn’t wake up at all. I fed her around ten, and she fell back asleep right away,” she whispered and brushed a blanket of black hair from her face, her colorful bangles dancing on her wrist.
    “She must have been really tired,” I said. “We spent all day at the park, all that fresh air . . .” What sounded like a pleasant outing had been nothing more than a screaming baby in a stroller who eventually fell asleep out of sheer exhaustion.
    I looked over at Mia, picture perfect in her crib, her face angelic and placid while only hours earlier she had thrashed her hands toward my face, her mouth a gaping wound.
    Aashi left and I wandered around the apartment, unable to settle. I found myself in front of Jack’s office. I didn’t want to snoop but my behavior at his office—now nothing more than a moment of lunacy—demanded an explanation and I had nothing to give him. Nothing but a sea of irrationality. Jack was going to ask questions, he’d want to know what had possessed me to do what I had done. I needed a logical reason, proof of his infidelity, proof that he couldn’t be trusted any longer. I had to find a picture, a letter, a photograph, anything tangible beyond a random accusation that would justify my outburst.
    I stood in the doorway, taking in the shelves and filing cabinets. I had no idea what I was even looking for. Jack had started paying all the bills after Mia was born, handled all the paperwork, and I was glad he did. There wasn’t another chore I could manage, especially not anything that involved deadlines. But maybe his taking over the finances was just a way of increasing control over the woman who had floundered. It was ironic that the differences that brought us together—Jack’s sense of purpose and his attraction tomy carefree attitude toward life and, as he saw it, unpredictability—were the very things that were also driving us apart. That and the fact that I was an absolute failure as a mother.
    The floorboards creaked as I entered the office and a familiar aroma of leather greeted me. Like an observer I stood beside myself, watched a woman scan fake paneling between rows of books, pushing at conspicuous spots, looking around, expecting an antique oil painting to fall off the wall, an envelope yellowed by age dropping to the ground, containing some clandestine content. The woman’s fingers slipped, almost snapping her nails off, as she tried to pull open a locked drawer. I watched her, running her fingertips alongside the bottom of the desk’s surface, pushing here and there, lifting keyboard, mouse pad, and desk organizer, but reality greeted her harshly: no hidden drawers, no secret compartments, just a piece of contemporary office furniture. The woman jerked back into reality when the phone rang.
    I backed away from the desk. The chair fell to the floor.
Thud.
The phone continuously nagged to be picked up.
    Ring. Ring.
    Its pesky urgency was replaced by an infant’s faint gurgle echoing through the house. The baby monitor’s light display on Jack’s desk indicated the volume of Mia’s cries: