Just the Nicest Couple by Mary Kubica

Author:Mary Kubica
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Park Row Books
Published: 2022-11-16T16:14:52+00:00

* * *

We’re ten minutes late to the appointment, which does nothing for my mother’s or my stress. The biopsy is a fine needle aspiration, which I’ve read is the easiest as biopsies go. There are far worse types. I ask her if she wants me to come into the room with her, but she goes in alone.

It doesn’t take long. After the biopsy, we go out for dinner, though we’re both too worked up to eat, for the same and for different reasons. She is thinking about the biopsy results. I am too, but I’m also thinking about Jake and about the device I found on my car. I can’t stop thinking about it.

We go for Mexican, which was once my mother’s favorite. From across the table, I can see that she is tired. We eat, or try to eat—it’s mostly a wasted effort—and then we go home.

“Don’t think about it,” I say to her as I drive, reaching for her hand. “Easier said than done, I know, but there’s no point in worrying about the results when we don’t even know if we have anything to worry about.”

The house is completely dark as I approach, so dark it’s hard to see. Both the outside and the inside lights are off. It was late afternoon when we left for the doctor’s appointment. The sun wasn’t anywhere close to setting. I didn’t even think to turn a light on, distracted and not thinking how dark it would be by the time we got back home. We were gone for hours and, in that time, the sun went down, night fell.

I press the button inside my car to open the garage door—grateful for the light the garage gives off—and drive my car in.

After turning the ignition off, I get out and go toward the door, to let myself into the house while my mother is getting out of the car.

But a foot from the door, I become paralyzed. The door into the house is moving. It’s open. I can see it bobbing in place from the air outside as a cool breeze wafts in the open garage. The door isn’t standing wide-open, but it isn’t pulled fully closed either. I could open the door just by pushing on it.

I never would have left the door like this. I didn’t leave the door like this.

“Is everything okay?” my mother asks, coming to stand behind me. She sees my reluctance, how I stop briefly before the door, taking a breath, looking at it lapping in the wind against the frame like waves on the shore. “Did you forget to close it?” she asks.

I don’t want to tell her what I’m thinking because she’s already so stressed and worried about everything. I don’t want to make it worse. “I must have,” I say, stepping up to the door. I lay my hand flat against it, take a breath and press it slowly open, wondering who or what I might find on the other side.

I slip my hand in first, feeling for the light switch.

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