Zero at the Bone by Mary Walker

Author:Mary Walker
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466893436
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

14

KATHERINE took one more look in the mirror hanging on the back of her locker door. There really wasn’t anything more she could do—she’d brushed her straight chestnut hair so it looked shiny and neat. She’d washed her face and added a touch of color to her cheeks and lips. But she kept staring at her face. What would her grandmother think of this face when she saw it for the first time in thirty-one years? Would she see there some trace of the five-year-old child she had known? Would she see in the gray eyes and straight nose some small reminder of Leanne, her only daughter? Or would she see a thirty-six-year-old woman who looked in no way familiar, an utter alien?

Although she had brought some other clothes with her, Katherine decided not to change out of her zoo uniform. She liked the dark-green cotton shirt with the zoo logo on the left sleeve and the patch over the right breast saying, “Katherine, Reptile Keeper.” And she liked the comfortable green pants with the big pockets. She thought it might be helpful somehow for her grandmother to see her wearing the uniform, to see that she was involved in the family endeavor.

She slung her big canvas tote over her shoulder, shut her locker, and walked out the back door of the reptile house into the cool air of late afternoon. Her heart was beating quick and light as she headed toward the parking lot. She had endlessly imagined what this day would be like, had envisioned scenarios of everything from being ejected bodily from the house to being enfolded in loving arms. But it didn’t matter, she told herself. She was going to drive to her grandmother’s house, and this time, instead of slumping down in the car to watch the house, she was going to walk up to the door, ring the bell, and identify herself. Stiffen the sinews; summon up the blood.

Driving up MoPac toward the Windsor exit, Katherine admired the subtle change of color in the leaves. It must have happened since she’d been in Austin, because she hadn’t noticed it on the drive from Boerne two weeks ago, and she had been so preoccupied since then that she hadn’t even looked. The sumac, brilliant red at the side of the road, leapt out from its background of rust and yellow.

The pasture behind her house would be softened by fallen leaves now and the grass would be turning brown. If she were at home, by now she would have chopped and stacked enough mesquite at the back door to fuel a winter of fires in her big stone fireplace. Thinking about that familiar landscape caused an actual pain at the center of her body, somewhere under the heart. Seven more days and it would belong to someone else. And Ra, too. It was still intolerable to think it, but she saw no way out.

Turning onto Woodlawn, she slowed down to give herself time for a few deep breaths.

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