Read Online The 14th Day by K.C. Frederick - Free Book Online Page B

Miss Lorraine says quietly and Ila is thrilled but even as she hears the words she sees something dark move across the woman’s face. What she sees there is so troubling that she has to look away, toward the pictures on the wall, seeking comfort in the assembled mass of confident faces and gestures. But there’s nothing there to calm her and she turns back to Miss Lorraine with some hesitation. When their eyes meet, Ila catches the residue of something that’s already fading, something complicated and terrifying that almost makes her wish she hadn’t come here. She feels a sadness that she can’t attach to anything. She can recognize, though, that what she saw was some kind of signal, that for a moment Miss Lorraine allowed her an unguarded look at something she had no right to see, though she doesn’t understand yet what it is that’s been communicated. It isn’t even about her, she knows somehow, or about Jory, it’s about Miss Lorraine herself. But why did she let Ila see it?
    â€œYes,” the woman says after a while, her expression making it clear she knows what Ila is thinking. “There’s a stranger. Someone who’s come here recently.” Ila nods, her heart pounds: it’s Jory, of course. But she’s still thinking about what she saw in the woman’s eyes. Miss Lorraine says nothing more, though; the next move is Ila’s.
    â€œThis man,” Ila begins. She wants to ask what will happen between them but, just as it happened earlier, a wave of physical exhaustion passes over her and Ila loses all track of time. When she recovers her attention she realizes at last what it was that Miss Lorraine has let her see: that she is in fact dying, just as Ila has guessed on first hearing her voice, that like Aunt Estrid, she has only a short time left. Ila looks at the woman’s small gray hands on the table. How does she know this, what makes her guess about the woman’s losses, the quarrel with her sister that was never made up, the children who haven’t come to visit in years, the death that will come on the very sofa that Ila glimpsed, in the flickering glow of the TV set, a bag of potato chips lying open beside her, the utter loneliness of Miss Lorraine’s final days? Suddenly Ila is crying.
    â€œNow, now,” Miss Lorraine looks at her, her eyes calm. Ila recovers, she blows her nose, composes herself. “You go on now,” Miss Lorraine says. “What were you going to ask?”
    All at once Ila understands the terms of the bargain she’s made with the woman: Miss Lorraine has let her see this about herself in exchange for her silence about something else: she doesn’t want to tell Ila what she sees about Jory’s future. At first the idea disturbs her—what does the woman see? Ila can feel the trembling in her hands but she breathes deeply, she watches the candle’s flame, and in time she’s calmer. She doesn’t need to know the future, she’s willing to act in darkness. Still, she’s curious about Jory and decides to venture a different question. “Will this man ever return to where he came from?” she asks. The woman looks at Ila scrutinizingly. Her face is blank. She shakes her head abstractly. “Things are not clear there,” she says. “I can’t say for certain.” Ila can only guess what Miss Lorraine saw about her and Jory but she knows it’s time to leave. I don’t care, she tells herself, I don’t want to know about the future. I want to be surprised. Acknowledging this, she feels a sudden strength.
    But this feeling is checked by her awareness that she’s never going to see this woman again. “Miss Lorraine, I’m so …” Her eyes are wet.
    The woman’s hand goes up. “You got your life to live.”
    Back in the car she has to wait a moment to calm herself before starting for home. Zita, who told her about Miss