The Resemblance by Lauren Nossett

Author:Lauren Nossett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Flatiron Books

* * *

Hours later, I awake in a cold sweat with the sensation I might have been yelling in my sleep. The dream is faint and clings to me like a spider’s thread, an almost invisible assailant in the night. I close my eyes, but there’s only blackness. And not the dark lids that shutter my pupils, but an inky, unnatural shadow consumes me. And then, a whisper, a snap, and I explode in flames.

“Marlitt.” My father’s voice, a question written in it, behind the bedroom door. “Everything all right?”

“I’m fine, Dad,” I murmur, my voice gravelly with sleep.

The door opens a crack and he shuffles in, still dressed in his striped polo and slacks.

“You’re up?” I ask.

“Just studying a little Athens history. Did you know Athens Regional started as a facility in a private home? There were only twelve beds.” He shakes his head in wonder. “And Ben Epps designed an airplane four years after the Wright brothers flew theirs at Kitty Hawk.”

He sits in the coral armchair angled in the corner and props his feet on my bed as he talks.

“I’m fine, Dad, really,” I say distantly.

He sighs and settles a little deeper into the chair. “You know, when you were a girl, you didn’t like to sleep either. You weren’t afraid of the dark—nothing like that,” he says with a hint of paternal pride, “but you always insisted someone be here with you. That you should have had brothers or sisters, and since we—your mother and I—were depriving you, one of us had to sit with you instead until you fell asleep.” His voice is amused, but a note of sadness creeps in.

I glance at him. That’s not entirely how I remember our nighttime routine. Instead, I remember waking to find the door open, him peering in to make sure I was asleep in my bed, still breathing, not blue faced, or abducted, or whatever he feared might happen in the middle of the night.

He yawns and settles deeper into the chair. “If it’s okay with you, I think I’ll stay just a little longer.”

I mean to tell him a third time that I’m fine and to please go to bed, but somewhere between thinking and speaking, the words drift away into that unidentifiable river of sleep and I’m enveloped in its tide.

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