Something True by Karelia Stetz-Waters

Author:Karelia Stetz-Waters
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2015-01-12T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

In her dream, Laura was at a cotillion dance, a relic of her childhood transported into adult life. The dancers swung past her in a blur, both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. Brenda was there, seeming to wear her mother’s face, and, in the dream, Craig was her ex-husband. On one wall of the dance hall, a banner read ENFIELD FOR SENATE, but it was Laura running for senate, not her father. The partners changed, and the room faded into another scene, a bar perhaps, or a dance hall. Laura looked around but suddenly everything was strange and shadowy, and she didn’t recognize anyone.

“Sweetheart,” someone whispered. “Laura.”

Laura woke to Tate leaning over her.

“Don’t wake up,” Tate said. “I have to go to work, just for an hour, to get things ready. Don’t worry. I’ll be back.”

Laura’s eye flew open.

“You’re beautiful,” Tate said, cupping Laura’s face in one hand. “Go back to sleep.” Just as Tate was closing the apartment door, she added, “Please stay.”

Or Laura thought she heard “Please stay.” Tate had spoken so softly her words got lost in the scrape of the door across the floor.

Laura waited until she heard the motorcycle roar away before she sat up. The apartment could not have been more than seven hundred square feet. The bed took up most of the floor space. There was also a table, two chairs, a stove with two burners, and a tiny refrigerator. Just enough for one person to survive. Minimally.

“Who lives like this?”

She did not answer aloud, although the answer came quickly: Me.

She rose, shielding her nakedness with a sheet. The window was screened with only a filmy blue curtain, like a scrim of sky.

Tate had left a vintage silk robe on a chair. Laura picked it up and pressed it to her face without thinking. It smelled of Tate’s cologne, a mix of cedar and tea rose. She breathed deeply.

A note on the chair read: Dear Laura, I had to go to work for an hour, but I took the rest of the day off. There is coffee in the pot, just turn it on. The password to my laptop is javadyke1976 if you need to do some work.

Laura opened the laptop out of habit, certain there was something she should be doing but uncertain what it was.

Leave Portland, she told herself. Never look back. That’s what she was supposed to do. Instead she sat at the small kitchen table and looked around.

On second glance, there was nothing of her spare hotel room in Tate’s studio apartment. Only the square footage was the same. Every surface in the apartment bore a trace of Tate’s life, from the hand-painted floor mat in the kitchen to the tray of seedlings on the windowsill. Shelves of books lined the walls, bearing authors Laura had been assigned in college but had skipped in favor of business texts: Melville, Hugo, Wolfe, Dickens. On the wall above the kitchen sink, a framed collage of photographs showed

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.