Versions of Her by Andrea Lochen

Author:Andrea Lochen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Women's fiction, sisters, family secrets, marriage, family life
Publisher: Red Adept Publishing
Published: 2019-07-22T16:00:00+00:00

MELANIE PUSHED THE porch swing back and forth lazily with her heels. Sprocket was sprawled out a few feet away, snoring louder than any small dog had the right to. She had been reading an article in Scientific American about seawater desalination, but no daylight was left to read by, so she’d dropped it into her lap and kept rocking instead of going inside.

Lights were on in the Fletchers’ house, and she could imagine Nicholas bathing Noah and reading him bedtime stories and Jess feeding Gracie and rocking her to sleep. They were probably frazzled and exhausted, rushing to get the children put to bed so that they could steal a few minutes of alone time together to eat a quick dinner and drink a glass of wine, but Melanie would have traded places with them in a heartbeat. She let her head loll back on the wooden swing. Would my baby have been a boy or a girl?

Sprocket suddenly shot up and sniffed at the darkness encircling the wraparound porch. Before Melanie’s mind had time to jump to horror-movie scenarios, her sister called out, “It’s just me,” and the little gray dog bolted toward his master.

“You’re home early. I didn’t hear a car.”

“He didn’t drive me home. I wanted to walk.”

Kelsey looked small and sad. Even her springy hair looked deflated. Melanie was reminded of her senior year of high school, when Kelsey, a sophomore at the time, had been invited to the prom by a popular junior, Wyatt Jameson. She had been so pleased with herself, getting to go to prom ahead of her time, since only juniors and seniors were allowed to go. Melanie had been unattached and had gone with a group of her other unattached friends, and that had seemed to sweeten the experience of going with a date for sixteen-year-old Kelsey—a date who bought her a red-rose corsage and drove a black Mustang convertible. But that night had ended early too. Melanie and her mom had patiently pulled bobby pins out of Kelsey’s updo—sixty-seven of them—and listened to her recounting the night’s disasters. Food poisoning at dinner and one too many trips to the restroom had caused Wyatt’s eye to turn to another girl. Kelsey had found them making out in the twinkly-lit courtyard while her favorite song, “Drops of Jupiter,” played in the gymnasium.

“He’s not worth the salt in your tears,” their mom had said, handing her a tissue, then locked eyes with Melanie over Kelsey’s head. Her frank gaze seemed to say, We adults understand these things, don’t we? Melanie had felt great affection for both her mom and her sister at that moment.

But her mom wasn’t there now, and Melanie didn’t know what to say. She suspected anything she did say would be interpreted as sermonizing or one giant “I told you so.” She sat quietly to see what Kelsey would do next, if she would go straight inside to her parents’ bedroom or if she would sit down. She sat down.

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