Convince Me by Nina Sadowsky

Convince Me by Nina Sadowsky

Author:Nina Sadowsky
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2020-08-03T16:00:00+00:00


* * *

This time it’s Annie who flicks the radio on, filling the car with a pulsing beat and screeching vocals. It’s angry music, edgy and defiant. We keep the volume up high.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CAROL

Annie doesn’t pick up. I’m not surprised; I didn’t actually expect she would.

I’d dialed Justin’s cellphone number at least half a dozen times just to hear his voice before trying her. Overwhelmed by the futility of hearing his same cheerful recorded refrain, “Leave a message and I’ll hit you back,” over and over again, I called Annie. I leave her a voicemail, asking how she’s doing and if she’d like to have a meal one day this week. Low key. No pressure. Kind.

Then I throw the phone across the room and watch with satisfaction as it smacks into the wall and clatters to the floor, the screen shattered. That felt good.

I barely slept last night, despite the two Ambien I gobbled down. Restless, I sweated right through two sets of pajamas and had to strip the still damp sheets as soon as I pulled my ragged body from the bed shortly before dawn. My infrequent dips into slumber were punctuated by fragments of terrifying dreams: images of looming strangers, car crashes, and, of course, fire, all underscored by a pervasive sense of uneasy longing and desperate failure.

After I remade the bed, I showered, dressed, and had a cup of tea and a slice of whole grain toast with my favorite orange marmalade. It was five forty-five in the morning and I had absolutely nothing with which to fill the rest of my day.

I curled in the sofa opposite the window in my living room for quite some time, watching the sun creep across the geometrically patterned area rug that dominates the space. I never would have expected to find myself in California, alone in this starkly modern apartment, in this city that never really feels like a city.

I remember the day Justin first told me he was moving to California. He’d been out of college for about eighteen months, living at home, but hardly ever there. He was following in my footsteps, selling real estate, although he was working for a slick Manhattan outfit that sold commercial buildings as opposed to the middle-class Long Island homes that had been my stock-in-trade.

While I was, of course, happy to have him back home, it was also an adjustment. He was a man, a college graduate and a working professional, and at the same time every time I looked at him I saw the baby in diapers, the toddler grinning, the serious little boy, the gregarious young adolescent.

And while I knew Justin, of course, I also didn’t know him at all.

Where he spent most of his nights, who his friends were, if he was dating, these were all mysteries. He breezed in and out of the house without warning, sometimes making me jump when I discovered him inside, sometimes disappearing so soundlessly that I wandered around our place convinced he’d be around the next corner, only to discover it was empty.



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