Read Online The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015 by Joe Hill - Free Book Online Page B

it work?”
    Her gaze was quizzical. “All I can tell you is that, sure, when they came back they liked the same cleaning brands.” She clicked and swiped. “All right, new section. Bed, made or unmade on a regular basis? If the former, who did it?”
    â€œWe did it together every morning,” he said. His eyes heated up and he hoped he wasn’t getting too teary. She tapped away.
    â€œYou two were sweet. It will be just as cute in the next round. You’ll see.”
    Â 
    He brought himself to ask his mother what she’d done with the cat. Her hands faltered as she chopped onions, then resumed their staccato beat.
    â€œMrs. Green two doors down had mice,” she said. “So I loaned her Taco Two.”
    â€œTaco Two? No palindrome?” he asked.
    A sizzle and then a wave of fragrance as she added the onions to the skillet. “I couldn’t think of one yet. I’m sure it’ll come to me eventually.”
    â€œEventually,” he repeated agreeably. He thought perhaps the cat would end up staying with Mrs. Green, but that was all right.
    â€œSo what else is new?”
    â€œI’m bringing her home tomorrow.”
    She put the spatula down in order to swing around and look at him, wide-eyed. “So soon?”
    He nodded. He was smiling again. She smiled back, wiping her hands on her apron before she came over to awkwardly hug him.
    Â 
    What do you bring to your first meeting with the person you used to be married to? He chose an armload of roses. Who cared if it was a cliché? Mindy loved them.
    He remembered buying them for her. The two of them together at the farmers’ market, wandering from stall to stall, buying bread rounds still warm from baking and bags of vegetables still thick with dirt and leaves. The way she managed to look at every display, ferreted out everything interesting, made people smile as she talked to them.
    Roses. So much like her in the way she opened to the world.
    Glimpsed through the pane of glass in the door, she seemed so small in the hospital bed. Her eyes were shut. Her hair had once been long, but now it was short, one or two inches at most.
    He said to Dr. Avosh, “Why did you cut her hair?”
    The doctor chuckled. “I can see where it would seem that way. But it’s because we’ve had a limited amount of time for her to grow hair in. It’ll come.”
    â€œWon’t that mess with her memories?”
    â€œWe’ve compensated.” The doctor put her hand on the gray metal doorknob before looking back over her shoulder at him. “Are you ready to say hello?”
    He nodded, unable to speak around the lump in his throat.
    The room smelled of lemon disinfectant. The nurse already there took the flowers from him with a muted squeal of delight. “Aren’t these pretty! I’ll put them in water.”
    Mindy’s eyes were still shut.
    â€œAre you awake, Mindy?” the doctor said. “You have a visitor.”
    Her eyes opened, fixing on him immediately. “Antony.”
    The same smile, the same voice.
    Emotion pushed him to the bed and he gathered her hands in his, kissing them over and over, before he laid his head down on the cool white hospital sheet and cried for the first time since she died.
    Â 
    He’d asked before what sort of cover story they would have for her waking up in the hospital. Of course they’d thought of that already: a slip in the shower, a knock on the head that accounted for any dizziness or disorientation.
    He’d prepared the house as well, made it as close as he could remember to their days together, removed the dingy detritus of a bachelor existence by bringing a cleaning service in. If it seemed too different and she questioned it, he’d tell her that he’d hired the service to help him cope while she was in the hospital.
    In the taxi home, as they rumbled their way up Queen Anne, he noticed it.
    She didn’t look