Read Online Waiting for Christopher by Louise Hawes - Free Book Online

room, okay? I’ve got a ton of work.”
    Her mother actually looked disappointed, like someone throwing a surprise party nobody wanted. Her smile, under those mascara-ringed eyes, was forced, too quick. “Sure,” she said, sitting heavily at the tiny table by the fridge. “Sure, go ahead. I’ll just freshen this up.” She lifted a vodka bottle over the forest of white cartons, some closed, some with their flaps wide, smeared with brown sauce. “Try the pork.” She nodded toward the biggest carton. “It’s got pineapple mixed in.”
    “You bought a lot.” Feena studied the food, the two places set at the table, each with one of the flamingo glasses Lenore had bought as a joke the day they moved in. The glasses had a plastic reservoir around the outside, so when you held them up to drink, a flurry of pink birds and metal confetti rushed toward your mouth.
    Lenore, too, glanced at the table, its abundant disarray. “Yeah, well…” She sounded almost embarrassed. “I didn’t know you weren’t coming home.”
    Feena dumped pork and fried rice onto a plate, picked up some silverware, and headed to her room. “Sorry, Mom,” she said, although it didn’t make her feel a whole lot better. They usually ate on paper plates by the light of her mother’s shows. “It’s just, you know. It’s a new school. There’s lots of stuff to catch up on.”
    “Yeah, well…,” Lenore repeated, not looking at Feena, not focused on much of anything so far as Feena could tell.
    Minutes later, though, when she’d closed her door, opened the window, and moved the tiny pots of African violets lined up along her air conditioner—when she’d assured herself that she could see the golf booth from both a standing and a sitting position, that she could hear Christopher if he cried out—Feena’s mood lifted.
    The rich, heady smell of the pork, so different from the barbecued ribs she and Lenore had eaten at the fast-food stops on their endless drive south, made her feel adventurous. The soy sauce and the bits of pineapple lent a tingly sweetness to every bite. Such sweetness that as she ate, there were times, for a few seconds at least, when she forgot her life had changed, that only yards away, Christopher was waiting.

seven

    F eena slept fitfully, only a hint of air coming through her window, the sticky plate on the floor beside her bed. In her dreams, Christy cried out again and again. Over and over she woke, peering anxiously into the night, hearing nothing but the whir of her mother’s air conditioner, the faint hum from the late-night trucks that still used the highway, and the electronic crackle of the sputtering
S
just outside the golf booth.
    She’d set her alarm to go off a half-hour before her mother woke for work. But she was up a full hour and a half before that, scanning the fuzzy half dawn, then creeping into the kitchen. She was determined to do better this time, to remember things like a can opener and spoons and knives. She scribbled another note, this one a bit more detailed, aimed at warding off more mother-daughter dinners.
    Had to leave early—BIG TEST! Might be late again. Don’t make dinner
. Light. Keep it light.
xox, Feen
.
    Once outside, she crept to the booth, bent her head under a flap, and looked inside. Christopher lay just where she’d left him, except that the rabbit had somehow been jettisoned and was sprawled, nose down, at his feet. She took the key from its hiding place under the roof and opened the door as quietly as she could.
    She had hoped to watch him sleep, just for a few minutes. But it was no good; the second she moved inside, he turned toward the door, kicked his still-sneakered feet (how could she have forgotten to take off his shoes?), and sat up, rubbing his eyes with his fists.
    Instinctively, Feena knew he needed to see her face first, not the clubs or the counter or the strange place where he’d fallen asleep. Stooping down, she grabbed his hands, pulled them apart, and