Read Online Tigers in Red Weather by Liza Klaussmann - Free Book Online

“Honestly, Helena.” She shook her head in wonderment. “I knew something funny was going on out there, but I didn’t realize he had you convinced that it was art.”
    “You’re being unfair,” Helena said. “He may be unusual, but what’s wrong with that? He loves me and, Nick, he understands me. I owe him my support.”
    “Your financial support, you mean.” Nick saw her cousin’s face color, and she felt her passion receding. She put her hand on Helena’s shoulder, saying gently, “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be critical. But really, darling. This is cracked, you can see that, can’t you?”
    “Nick, he’s my husband. And my second at that. I don’t plan to get a divorce and move on to number three.”
    Nick pulled Helena to her and put her cheek against her soft hair. “We could ask someone at Hughes’s law firm.”
    “I’m having a baby.”
    Nick drew away and looked at her for a moment, and then slowly nodded her head. “Right. Of course you are.”
    “The whip-poor-will may be in the brush where it has hidden during the hours of light, or it may have stolen close to the house. It may even drop unperceived on the housetop, and cry out with sudden vehemence in the middle of the night, perhaps sending a shiver through those persons whose nervous organization is susceptible of impressions ominous or superstitious.”
    Nick felt the baby kick, like a very small flash of lightning running down her belly. She began sorting through the mail. In one pile, she put the bills for Hughes to look at when he returned from work. In another, she put their social correspondence, which she would have to reply to tomorrow, after the ironing.
    “Oh god, life is boring,” she said to the empty kitchen.
    Nick knew that Hughes wanted a girl, but a boy wouldn’t have todeal with all of life’s mundane details. He would call the shots, do whatever he pleased. He would be strong and determined and independent, without having to apologize or bake cookies he didn’t even want to eat.
    She stopped. “For crying out loud, cheer up,” she told herself. She found these black moods coming over her more and more frequently these days. Dr. Monty had said it was normal to feel off during pregnancy.
    “Many women feel a bit down during this time,” he said, his hand lingering a little too long on her knee as they sat in his little office off Brattle Street. “It’s very normal, Mrs. Derringer. It’s a big change for any woman, but a welcome one.”
    Last week he had recommended she start reading more enlivening books, eyeing Kant’s Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime suspiciously. “Many of my patients have found following patterns very uplifting. Industry, that’s what I recommend,” he said, assurance leaking out of his voice.
    And Nick had gone and bought a book of patterns, for day dresses. It was sitting upstairs in her dressing room, still wrapped in its brown paper.
    She put a finger to the meringues. They had cooled. She brought over the black tin lined with waxed paper and gently started placing them in it, taking care not to break their peaks. She wondered what Helena was doing at that moment, how she was dealing with life with a baby. Ed was four months old now, and Nick kept telling herself that her cousin must be awfully busy with her son. But she couldn’t help feeling that during their brief chats on the telephone, Helena sounded increasingly far away, like she was underwater.
    Each time, it made Nick a little sorry, although not entirely, for the way they had parted at the end of Helena’s visit. After their first conversation about Avery, they had stuck to happier subjects. But thenight before Helena went back to Los Angeles, Nick couldn’t help bringing him up one last time.
    “You don’t have to go back to him, you know,” Nick said. Hughes had gone to bed and they were finishing off what had already been a little too much wine.
    “I want to go back to him,” Helena