The Son Between Them by Molly O'Keefe

Author:Molly O'Keefe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-08-18T16:00:00+00:00

J ENNIFER WAS SITTING beside Doug’s bed. Again. Watching his chest lift and fall. Lift and fall. Knowing there wasn’t going to be any hesitation. That, should she allow it, his chest would never stop its measured undulation thanks to the machine he was attached to.

She sat back, weary to the bone just as one of the machines started blaring a terrifying alarm. Jennifer hurled herself across his bed, trying to gauge which machine hooked up to which part of his body was malfunctioning.

Lungs. Heart. Kidneys.

More alarms. More blaring. Her heart pounded in her chest. Which one? Which one?

“Jennifer?”

She whirled to face her husband, ashen and so thin it nearly killed her to look at him. But there were no in-tubation tubes, no oxygen mask. He was smiling.

“It’s your phone, sweetie,” he told her. “Not my heart.”

Jennifer crashed into consciousness with a sickening impact. Sitting up, the reality of her surroundings, the shelter’s rough sheets, beige walls, snapped her out of her dreamland. Nauseous and disoriented, she looked for Spence, panic a flash flood in her bloodstream. But then she saw the note next to her ringing phone. He was reading in the common room. Relieved, she grabbed her phone from the bedside table.

“What?” she barked, pushing her hair from her face.

“Jennifer? It’s Kerry.”

“Waldo?” she asked, reality like an IV drip coming to her slowly, one blessed bead at a time. “What time is it?”

“About eight on Sunday. I’ve been trying to get you at home.”

“I’m not there.”

Kerry laughed. “So I gathered. I know you don’t like us using this number, but it’s an emergency.”

Uh-oh. Kerry Waldo, her producer—or maybe former producer, depending on whether or not the station was going to hold all these unpaid leaves against her—was calling her with an emergency.

It was almost like old times.

If old times included spending the night at homeless shelters and dreaming of her dead husband.

“What’s up?” She swung her feet to the floor.

“Annabelle Greer wants to do an interview.”

Everything went still. Annabelle Greer. Jennifer waited for the rush of excitement, the old thrill that used to fill her at the prospect of such a story. God. Annabelle Greer. It was once in a lifetime. Jennifer’s very specific career dream come true.

And Jennifer felt nothing.

“That’s great,” she said with as much enthusiasm as she could fake. Kerry laughed.

“You’re kidding, right?” Kerry asked. “You’ve been hounding that woman for three years.”

That was three years ago. A lifetime and a husband ago.

“I’m on vacation.”

Kerry was silent and Jennifer could tell it wasn’t one of the good types. Kerry was biting her tongue.

“It’s been six months, Jennifer—”

“So I should be over it? My husband died, Kerry.”

“I know, I know, Jennifer. I’m not saying you should be over it. I’m saying maybe work would do you some good. Maybe it’s time to get out among the living.”

“The living?” Jennifer asked. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means Doug died, not you,” Kerry said. “You’ve spent most of the past year in a hospital and your bed.

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