Measure of Blood by Kathleen George

Author:Kathleen George
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Published: 2013-11-19T16:00:00+00:00

11.

Wednesday

LATER TODAY ZIAD WILL have to go in to the office to teach his piano students. He’s hardly moved away from the table and his work since the detectives were there; he didn’t even go for a run yesterday. Or buy food. The refrigerator sat almost empty, cooling a quarter bottle of milk, some soda, a few limp vegetables, and an old chunk of cheese until last night when Kate went out and filled it up again.

“What’s the matter with you?” she asked as she unpacked the groceries.

He’s never kept a secret from Kate before. He couldn’t tell her. How could he tell her?

Outside the window of this place, Kate’s condo, is a city garden, crowded with plants, the blooms going or gone. The gardeners keep after it daily, but sometimes he catches that moment when the bloom dies—like a head tilted to the side.

This morning he carries his coffee outside to the deck. The sun is not visible today. The air is moist. Even though his feet are cold from the cement deck, he doesn’t want to go back inside.

He will defend in November. They will marry in December. She’s pregnant, three months, but she doesn’t want to deal with a wedding until the dissertation is done.

The cold of the cement deck—funny to call it a deck—seeps through to his bare feet. He steps back in, goes into the bedroom, and, forcing himself, puts on socks and shoes and gets the set of house keys he takes when he goes running. It’s a gray day with clouds moving in toward his neighborhood. Pushing himself, he takes the stairs, passes his mailbox, but then goes back to it, checking. No, of course, nothing. Not yet. What did he expect? It will take time. It will come when he’s not watching. Or it will be a special FedEx package. He puts everything back into the box and heads out.

As he runs, he gives in to the comforts of routine: slow speed until he gets to the fountain that marks ten minutes of running and the spray hits him in the face, on the shoulder, invigorating him. He picks up speed, circles the fountain twice and moves on to the running path. Ten minutes on the circular path and back to the fountain. He’ll do two more laps on the path and then the ten minutes back home.

During the first lap he thinks about how and when to tell Kate about the form he will soon sign, about his history. He imagines her listening, speaking in that logical way she has—kindly—about the emotional upheaval it must cost him. By the second lap, she has become cold and frosty, disappointed in him. She says terrible things.

He thinks perhaps he can’t tell her after all. How can he undo the miracle of her loving him? The image that will remain with him forever is the night he was playing music and she sat in the club with friends. She had such a confident manner, he assumed she must be rich and privileged.

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