Prized Possessions by L. R. Wright

Author:L. R. Wright
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781937384913
Publisher: Felony & Mayhem Press
Published: 2017-04-04T16:00:00+00:00

29

RAY KNUDSON LEANED across the counter of the restaurant he owned with his wife, Frieda. “What an awful thing,” he said, almost in a whisper, so as not to be overheard by the red-haired man in the beige jacket who was reading a newspaper three stools away.

Kathy nodded.

“I still can’t believe it,” said Ray, who was tall and bony, with very wide shoulders and no hips. “I feel like it was my fault, you know?” He was wearing an apron with a bib. “I mean, she wouldn’t have been out on the street at that hour, except she was on her way here, you know?” His long brown hair was pulled back sleek and clean and secured with an elastic band.

“It wasn’t your fault, Ray,” said Kathy.

“I know it. But it feels like it was.” He reached under the counter for a small cardboard box. “Here’s her stuff.” She took the box from him and headed toward the door. “We really miss her,” he said quietly.

Kathy looked through the glass door at the post office across the street. People were hurrying in and out—it looked very busy over there. Almost as if it were Christmastime. Kathy counted the months between today and Christmas and wondered if it was enough time in which to get over the death of a friend.

“Yeah. Me too,” she said, and went out onto the street.

She walked home, through a neighborhood that during the last three years had become as familiar as the one in which she’d grown up. She liked this. It was good to feel comfortable in a house, a neighborhood, that was unknown to her family. Having one’s own neighborhood, she thought, verified one’s independence.

She walked down the street, the box nestled casually in the crook of her arm, and gazed upon the establishments she frequented: the dry cleaner, the bakery, the hardware store, the convenience store that sold almost nothing but flowers.

Then the ache was there again, twisting in the back of her throat—the ache of mourning.

And she thought that she probably wouldn’t be going to Ray’s café anymore. Probably none of them would.

For the first time Kathy acknowledged that she might not continue to live here—in this neighborhood; in that house. Even if the three of them carried on with the original plan for the summer—and that wasn’t certain; they were all mulling it over—even if they did, who was to say whether they’d be back here in the fall?

Kathy walked on to the end of the block, and then stopped, and carefully leaned her body against the corner of the gourmet coffee store. Her day-to-day life seemed to consist of nothing but a series of shocks. Of course, she’d never had anybody die on her before. It was probably totally normal that the world went out of joint for a while when a person you cared about died. But if you weren’t prepared for it, you could get pretty shook up. Kathy staggered through each day bewildered and tense, with an arm raised, metaphorically speaking, against the new blows that she knew would fall.

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