Bleeding Kansas by Sara Paretsky

Author:Sara Paretsky [Paretsky, Sara]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2008-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Nine

SUICIDE TRY

WHEN JIM GOT HOME, he washed the dishes, scrubbed down the countertops, and swept and washed the floor. Since getting the news about Chip, he and Susan had let things slide around the house. He didn’t want to slide down to Burton-style living.

What had he been thinking, to go over there at all? It was completely against his philosophy of not messing with the neighbors’ business. All it did was set people’s backs up. He’d told his kids that a thousand times if he’d told them once, and here he was a walking, talking example of how to get everyone stirred up against you. Clem Burton was a loose cannon; in the same half minute, he’d damned Arnie and Jim impartially, as if they were the same man, and who could blame him? Jim would have done the same if Clem came over claiming Lulu or Chip—claiming Lulu was breaking into someone’s house.

He went up the stairs, into his bedroom. Susan was asleep. Anger was building in him. How dare she lie around like this, self-indulgent, hugging her grief while he tried to keep the farm going?

His ever-so-great-grandmother’s diaries were on the bed, partially visible beneath the landfill of papers Susan had created. Papers covered the bed; more were scattered across the floor. He waded through them on his way to her side. He shook Susan’s arm, lightly at first, but, when she didn’t respond, more roughly.

She moaned; her eyes were puffy slits, but she didn’t move. He bent down next to her. “Susan! Susan?”

He lifted her head, which lolled back on his arm. Fear chased his anger; for a long moment, he stood still. Was it her heart? Starvation? The drugs? A hoarse gasp from his wife goaded him to action. He slid through the mass of papers to the bathroom and scrabbled in the towel caddy for a washcloth. Scraps in Susan’s sprawling handwriting littered the sink and bathtub; she’d even written on the wall while sitting on the toilet. As he ran cold water onto the cloth, he read “No vision, television, tell-a-vision,” scrawled over so many times the letters blurred together.

He hurried back to the bed with the cold wet cloth and draped it across his wife’s forehead, so that water ran down her ears and neck, but she only twitched and moaned again. Her breathing was shallow and fast.

“Lulu!” he yelled. “Lulu! Come here!”

His daughter didn’t answer. He scrabbled through the wild mass of papers, looking to see if his wife had taken any pills, but he didn’t see an empty bottle. He picked her up and threw her over his shoulder. He slipped and almost fell on the paper as he went to the bedroom door but managed to catch himself by grabbing the dresser handle.

Susan swayed on his shoulder like a bag of seed corn, except she wasn’t as heavy. He stumbled down the hall to his daughter’s room. Lara had her everlasting music stuck in her ears.

“Get those damned ear things out!” he shouted, beside himself with terror.

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