Read Online Stars Go Blue by Laura Pritchett - Free Book Online

Ruben!”
    â€œWhoa-now. Jeez, Renny.”
    She stares at him full on. She sees he is startled enough to have pulled himself up, shifted from the young man that he is into the fuller man he is becoming, and she realizes that this is precisely the time in his life when this upheaval is occurring, that this very moment and situation might be the tipping point.
    â€œGoddamn Alzheimer’s. If only I had some. And be particular about its influence. The memory of Rachel’s death, for instance. I’d like to lose that one. Okay? Get the hell away from me, Ruben. I can’t talk right now.”
    She pushes the door open and stands out in wide white world, blinking back tears. She sees herself, cooking for Ben, while he read to her from the newspaper. She remembers how she heard three blasts of Rachel’s truck. How she glanced up, to look out the kitchen window. Irritated. Here was her daughter being loud and obnoxious once again. But then, something about the way Rachel jumped from her truck. The wave of her hair. How Rachel, running into the house, turned around and looked over her shoulder. How she must have seen Ray’s truck pulling in the driveway. How Rachel burst through the door then. How Rachel was screaming, and Renny was so angry—god, weren’t her daughters ever going to quit needing her with such ferocity?—and she started to yell at Rachel.
    This is the moment that has become slowed down in her mind. Why didn’t she lock the door, then? It would have taken three seconds. Three. If only she had done that. Because the next minute, Ray was in the door, raising a pistol, and Rachel was screaming, and there was blood everywhere. And Ben leapt up from his kitchen chair and ran after Ray, to tackle him, and Rachel was in her arms, dying. She had one small chance to save her daughter, and instead she yelled. And it takes everything she has not to yell now. To punch and scream and kick.
    â€œRenny?” It’s Ruben’s quiet voice behind her.
    She turns, breathes in. “Ruben, good to see you! I’m so sorry about that. I just . . . well. Haven’t done that in a long time. We’re late, Ben and I, to go visit Rachel’s grave. Call me later, how about? I’ll talk to you later. I really will.” She says thiswhile she walks to her truck, the last bit from the driver’s seat, and before he responds, she shuts the door.
    She throws the mail on the dash, where it lands on top of Ben’s already-faded pink Valentine’s Day card. “Here we go, then,” she says. “Here we go, then.” She must calm down, and the best way to do that is to talk. “I wish you’d taken me to Mexico,” she says. “Just once. One vacation that you planned for me.”
    Ben doesn’t say anything, but looks down at his hands, rubs his fingers together.
    Renny backs the truck out, nearly hitting white-haired Violet in her Cadillac, who is just pulling in the parking lot. Then she takes a right at the stop sign onto the highway that will take her into town. On the way, she throws still-frozen Fred out the window and watches the red-feathered chicken go careening through the air and land on the snow. “We’re going to pick up some flowers and visit Rachel’s grave. Okay? Got it? That’s our plan.”
    â€œI could use a bite to eat,” says Ben. “Mexico,” he says later.
    She says nothing. Otherwise she will spew out every real thought she has ever had. There is no well of patience left. It’s dry. Today is Rachel’s birthday; she would have been forty. The very least she can do today is be kind. She’s got to get a hold of herself. She’ll be kind for just a bit longer in honor of her daughter, who was, come down to it, probably a kind person. It’s true Rachel didn’t have her act together, it’s true she dated horrible men and married a horrible man, it’s true that she had two