Because I Said So by Karin Kallmaker

Author:Karin Kallmaker [Kallmaker, Karin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781642470734
Publisher: Bella Books
Published: 2019-06-13T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Two

Too many nights in a row spent staring at the ceiling. Now it was too many mornings unable to meet her own eyes in the mirror as she brushed her teeth. Shannon would have liked to pretend she didn’t know what the problem was. But she did. She’d buried the guilt under worry for Paz, good food and fresh air in Portland, and focus on work.

Coward.

She was schooled by the younger people, who were fearless about their feelings. She wanted to call it reckless, which was an easy out and said in her aunt’s voice. The practice of incessant caution made her good at the work she did, which she not only loved but thought helpful in the world.

Other times it quite clearly got in the way.

Kesa had been fearless, once upon a time.

Shannon gripped the sink, unable—unwilling—to hold back the memories. After their skin-searing first night she had arrived home the next day to spin through the living room like Julie Andrews on a mountaintop. She’d felt like sunshine itself.

With a parting breathless kiss, Kesa had agreed to come to Shannon’s at six for pizza and a movie. That gave Shannon a few hours to clear away all the telltale signs of Single Woman Living Alone. She tsk’d at her lazy habits: sink full of coffee mugs and spoons, tampon box on the floor in the bathroom, a pile of suits for the dry cleaner, and three containers of science experiments in the refrigerator. Why hadn’t she gone ahead with her plan to change the thick living room drapes and replace the thinning carpet? The house still looked as if Aunt Ryanne was alive.

She flung open every window she could, set alight lemongrass-scented candles, and attacked the bathroom with bleach. The antique sideboard’s collection of washed but not yet put-away dishes was quickly dealt with, and she revolved through the living room, picking up her aunt’s many knickknacks to put in a box buffered by newspaper—a task she’d meant to do on the first anniversary of her aunt’s death. Energized, she cleared a small space in the cluttered garage to house the arrangement of pressed flowers in glass frames from the living room. She unearthed a poster print by Clyfford Still she’d bought last year with the intention of finding a better frame before she hung it. The cheap plastic one would have to do. She hung it over the couch where the pressed flower collection had been and was happy to see that the tawny browns and oranges with shocks of blue and black looked as vibrant as she’d hoped.

There was no helping the couch. She pulled a throw of gray and black Drummond tartan out of the hutch. Clan Drummond, her aunt had said, was the source of the Dealans many generations ago. It covered the aging upholstery at least.

The trouble with the sunshine now streaming in through the French doors was how well it showed off all the dust. She could take care of that after she changed the sheets on the bed and put fresh towels in the bathroom.

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