A Fractured Truth by Carol Brennan

Author:Carol Brennan [SLATE, CAROLINE]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BookBaby
Published: 2016-05-15T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY

Craig returned to the office Monday morning after a foil week’s absence, looking as peaked as though he really had just recovered from the flu. We hadn’t talked much during the week he was out. The couple of times I’d called to check on him, he was still buried under what he called “the sads” and not up for talking.

“You okay?” I asked when I walked in to find him already at his desk.

“Will be. Thanks for giving a damn.”

I wanted to ask him if Angel had shown up or called but something in his face made me feel like the question might wound. “You going to Sheilah’s party tomorrow night?” I asked instead.

“Rather have my fingernails pulled out one at a time,” he said, not smiling. “She e-mailed me an invitation and I told her I was feeling weak and probably wouldn’t be up to socializing by Tuesday. Not a total lie, see? I’m not in the best shape, Grace. Angel-I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Well, holler if… you know …”

“I do know,” he’d answered with a half smile.

“And you do the same, Grace. I’m a piss-poor friend right now, but that said, if you need me you holler too. I’ll hear you.”

“Well, you’re in luck. I’m not needing to holler just this minute.”

Sheilah’s party was called for seven-thirty-Tuesday being what she liked to call a school night. She had taken the afternoon off to prepare her apartment for the do and herself for lawyer Berenstain. They’d seen each other a good few more times by now and he’d taken her to places she loved going: “Gramercy Tavern, Gracie, and more Carlyle, and Lespinasse. It’s not just the places. He is smart and funny and. . .” That good grin of hers. “You’ll see for yourself.” Her parting words to me before cutting out at noon were, “Get there on time, okay?”

I left the office at a quarter to seven and strolled down Park toward Murray Hill. My general mood was no way as up as it had been last week when she’d proposed her party. The phone exchange with McCail had gotten under my skin and sat there like a rash, reminding me of his irritating existence. Irritating in another way was the stubborn shred of hope that George would one day come looking for me in cyberspace, which kept me checking e-mail several times a day whether I intended to or not.

As I approached Sheilah’s building, my mind had drifted eight years into the past, to the time after George left and I fell apart. Those first few months I drew a kind of chalk circle around myself, stood in the center and burrowed into work. Often I stayed all night at the studio making pieces unlike any I’d made before, pieces with a reckless edge to them: rings and pins and bracelets that featured smashed fragments of the most beautiful, expensive glass I could find and break. I would buy Tiffany, Baccarat, Lalique and take a hammer to them, then select the shards I wanted to frame in roughly twisted gold and silver.

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