The Air We Breathe by Christa Parrish

Author:Christa Parrish [Parrish, Christa]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: General Fiction, FIC026000, Female friendship—Fiction, Psychic trauma—Fiction, FIC042000, Teenage girls—Fiction
ISBN: 9780764205552
Publisher: Bethany House
Published: 2010-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

17

CLAIRE

FEBRUARY 2009

Claire didn’t want to be still. Her body had to move in time with her explosive thoughts. She paced back and forth in front of the bed, in the guest room she and Andrew shared, the plush green carpet darkly streaked with her feet’s disturbance. Her belly contracted under her palm, the skin pulling tight, hardening with a fuzzy twinge. She exhaled, her mouth starting in a little O, then flattening until her lips pressed nearly together and her breath whistled out between them.

“You need to rest,” Andrew said.

“I can’t.”

“The baby—”

“It’s nothing. Just Braxton Hicks.”

“Claire, sit.”

She did, in the chair by the window, as far from her husband as she could get. He sat on one corner of the bed, near the headboard and nightstand on his side. The right side. They both had been sleeping on that side when they married, and she gave it up for him, though she was still most comfortable there, too, and sometimes she started on the right side if she went to bed before him, pretending to be asleep when he finally came upstairs. He would kiss her hair and slip in behind her, and when she snuggled back against him, he’d say, “You always know that spot is yours if you want it.”

“This is my spot,” she’d tell him, rolling overtop of him, to the left, and burrowing into his chest. “Which side of the bed—that’s just geography.”

Now Andrew moved around the mattress, sat with his leg touching hers. “You can’t go over there by yourself tonight.”

“Nothing’s going to happen.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Oh, Andrew, come on. This isn’t television.”

“People don’t just disappear when they have nothing to hide.”

“I’m done with this conversation.”

“I’m not,” he snapped, and then quickly softened. “I know you loved that little girl, but think about it, Claire. If they wanted you to know where they were, they would have contacted you a long time ago.”

“I have thought about it. I’ve thought about it every day since I showed up there and she was gone. I used to wonder all the time if I’d see her on the street one day, in the grocery store, in the mall. Early on, that is. I’d look for her everywhere. Then I stopped.” Claire winced as the baby inside her jammed its feet under her ribs. “I didn’t even recognize her.”

Andrew went into the bathroom, came back with a glass of water, and gave it to her. She drank it all—lukewarm, the way she liked it—and the baby quieted. “I need to know what happened. From her,” she said.

“Then I’m waiting outside the door for you.”

“Okay,” she said, “okay.” And her husband tugged her from the chair, pulled down the bedspread.

“Take a nap. Please. For me.”

“I’ll try.”

He kissed her, pushing her down into the pillow, and her body went willingly. Then he lowered the shade and switched off the light. “I’ll call you for dinner.”

She couldn’t sleep, Hanna’s little-girl face in her mind whether she kept her eyes opened or closed, pale and ethereal and floating between the two metal swing chains, where Claire first met her.

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