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

slowly of a long disease, in the same kitchen.
    She puts the idea out of her mind; she’s too close to panicand insanity to entertain any thoughts. Thinking of her daughters dying. Instead, she considers how tired she is. Maybe she should have her thyroid checked. Maybe she’s got cancer. She’s so tired of doing everything. She’s so tired of no one noticing.
    Esme says that the memories that get saved are those that had strong emotional connection, which is why it hurts her that he never talks about their wedding day, or the birth of their children. He talks of water and cows and onions. He must never have loved her at all. What a waste of both their lives.
    She’s going to try. She wants to say something about a new important thought she has had. How spirits go up, toward the sky, but souls go down, toward the earth and toward water. Water runs down because the earth pulls it that way. The soul wants to go down, too, and grow roots, run like a river. And that maybe death is like water running backward. Could that be?
    She wonders, for the both of them, if they’ll be brave enough to face it. They’ll have no choice, of course, but it would be nice to know they could muster calm confidence and composure and a bit of spunk. Use death as your advisor , she heard once. In that way, you live well, and you die well. If you have practiced, you can relax into it, which is the way to go. Kicking and screaming and scared, that’s the worst way; it’s no good to try to avoid the unavoidable.
    But how can she put words to that?
    She can feel the heat from the truck blasting on her feet. It feels as if her feet are touching hell. She needs to find some sky, some kindness, some love.

BEN
    B en watches her place a sheaf or hay bale of flowers on the earth. He forgets what kind, but they are the best, and they’re the color of a girl’s soft cheeks. Skin-colored pink on the pure white snow, which will turn to water and be absorbed into the ground, into Rachel’s bones.
    â€œCarolyn and Jess were here,” Renny says, and Ben sees that a little tear has come from the side of her eye. He knows why. Because he sees that someone has arranged river rocks in a wave pattern on top of the snow, as if the river rocks themselves were a river. Cairns have been made too. Beautiful rocks from the river at the ranch. It was Carolyn and Jess who came to do that, to make a river of stones and mountains of stones, and it’s these things that are making Renny cry.
    He puts his arm on her shoulder and she says “Oh, Ben, today it’s too much,” and leans a little, but not completely, into him. Oh. He hasn’t felt her do that in so long.
    What is the word that says so much?
    She says, “Today I can’t . . . Today I need a . . .”
    And he opens his mouth. What is the word? Maybe if he can singsong it?
    â€œI just am all out . . .” And now she is sobbing, and it reminds him that she rarely cried in all their marriage, but when she did, it was loud horrible scenes, a sudden release of crashing energy.
    He says, “I’m sorry I’m so sorry I am so sorry.”
    That’s the word, that’s the word!
    She looks at him. Has he said those words before? No? Why does she look so surprised? He says them over and over until his brain is cleared out. He holds her to him and says it. Renny is crying and crying and crying into his chest. The dust has been blown away. He knows it’s the right thing to say. The tip of his tongue grew back for just this one moment. To say he’s sorry that this daughter is dead, and that his brain is dying, and that he couldn’t stop either.
    She stops crying and simply breathes into his coat jacket, right at the place it reads CARHARTT . He can feel the rise and fall of her lungs, how the breath calms and evens. She is nodding to herself, accepting his apology.
    A bloom or gust of a feeling sweeps him. No words for it