A Good Happy Girl by Marissa Higgins

Author:Marissa Higgins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Catapult
Published: 2024-01-30T00:00:00+00:00

18

KATRINA’S MOTHER WAS NOT AT THE house. I asked if that was strange. I’ll admit, I felt nervous then. During the drive, I had asked if they needed to call and update her on our trip, but Katrina shrugged it off. She’ll be relieved when she sees our faces, she said. We were only two hours away then, half done with the journey, and I still had not given driving privileges to Catherine. Standing in the front room of an empty house, it occurred to me they may have given me such freedom to suggest a power I did not actually possess.

My phone did not have service in the house and I felt relief that I would not hear from my father for some time. The foyer was wide and open, leading straight into a sparse living room. A large and thick-screened TV took up most of the far wall. Beneath it, a handful of hardcover books, framed photos, and Red Sox memorabilia. I realized Katrina, in spite of now selling shoes, had grown up in a home with extra bedrooms. When we removed our boots, we arranged them on a rack to dry. The shoes stacked there already were all sizes.

In a loud whisper, I said, Do you think she’s asleep? All around us, quiet.

I’m not sure, Katrina said, her face hidden from me as she undid the loops of her wool scarf. Let me go look around.

Catherine told me to give her my snow-wet coat and I did.

I asked, Are you close with your mother-in-law? Catherine ignored my question, as I expected she might, and stepped forward. She kissed my hairline. In their doorway, I wanted them on either side of me, patting my wet hair, which, after my morning shower, had frozen and then melted on our journey. I wanted to hear, Darling, you’ve done a good thing but the wrong way. All it took for me to betray my father was a couple of near-strangers fretting over my risk of running a fever; I did not stop to even put the letter in the mail. But that wasn’t really it. Even if the wives had turned me away, changed their minds, canceled the trip, or at least my place in it, I would have gone home and eaten crackers and drank syrup and rubbed myself to sleep, letter still in my pocket. Traveling with the wives only fed my hope that I could be a bad person and experience good things.

Catherine removed her mouth from my head and asked for my gloves. She added that I needed to forgive her if her wife was a little much; she described Katrina as obsessive. I hope it’s not cloying, she said.

I thought this was Catherine’s way of addressing the messages and told her I enjoyed every opportunity to be seen. I hoped for a kiss, or at least a smile, but Catherine only snapped her fingers and so I removed my right glove, then my left. These were not sleek driving gloves.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.