Half of What You Hear by Kristyn Kusek Lewis

Author:Kristyn Kusek Lewis
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-11-09T00:00:00+00:00

Sixteen

The next day, Cindy barely greets me before she turns and screams into the dark foyer behind her.

“Susannah!” she yells, her voice echoing into the cavernous house.

The sun is out, but despite my heaviest winter coat I’m shivering on the front landing. It’s colder than it should be for this time of year, though when I spoke to my mother this morning, she laughed at me for whining about the weather in Virginia. She said she’d already had to use the ice scraper on her windshield this week.

“You really don’t have to yell for her—” I start, looking down at my feet. I’m standing on top of a massive, scrolling G that decorates a doormat the size of a twin bed. But Cindy keeps on, the power of her voice a stark contrast to her diminutive size, like Tinker Bell wielding a bullhorn. Under the arch of the imposing doorway, she looks like a child, a little elfin thing in the home of a giant.

A gust of cold wind blows, and Cindy hurries me in. “Come on, come on,” she says, trying to shield herself with her arm, and I stifle a laugh as I watch the wind push her hair off her forehead in one softball-sized hair-sprayed clump.

“You like my shirt?” Cindy asks, pinching it at the front and then letting it go. She’s caught me staring again. It’s bright aqua, with LEADER OF THE PACK written in a feathery modern font across the front.

“I do,” I say, thinking that I’m sure I saw it in the girls’ section at the Old Navy in Charlottesville when I took Livvie shopping before school started in August. “It’s cute.”

“Just want ol’ Miss to know where she stands!” she says, laughing. “Susannah!” she screams up the stairs, both hands cupped around her mouth. “Bess is here!”

“It’s okay,” I say, stepping onto the scuffed marble floor. “I’m not in any rush.”

Let me just hide out here for the rest of the day, I think. I’ve been in a horrendous mood all weekend, and dinner last night didn’t help. Bradley and Diane came over, the last thing I wanted after the way my night with Cole ended on Friday, but Diane would have been even more unbearable if I’d tried to cancel, wanting to know the reason for the change of plans and almost certainly taking it personally.

The problem is your son, I could have said, though I know that’s not really true. It’s not his fault, but I’m realizing how resentful I am of how easy the transition here has been for him. It’s like we’ve moved to a remote country on the far side of the world, and he’s the only one who speaks the language.

It didn’t help that when we sat down to eat, Diane managed to both criticize the sauce I’d made for the pork roast (“Bess, we can never accuse you of being stingy with the sugar, can we?”) and recount how she’d run into Eva at the grocery store that week (“So chic, that girl.

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