by Nicole Bross
She tossed back the wine, poured herself a third glass, and swallowed two of the pills. Mona had said they were good for when you were stressed; well, this was about the most stress she’d ever felt in her life.
It wasn’t long before she started to feel woozy, and she stumbled down the hall into the bedroom, leaning heavily on the wall. Her hands no longer had the coordination to undress and put on her nightgown, so she fell onto the bed, fully clothed. Mona was right. All her cares seemed to have slipped away. Everything was going to be all right; she saw that now. She loved Frank. She loved baby Jamie. And she loved Mona for sharing her wonderful red pills with her.
She lay like this, staring up at the ceiling, until it became too difficult to hold her eyes open, and a short while later fell into unconsciousness, her breathing becoming slower and slower until it ceased altogether.
20
When my hard-to-please customers sign their bill at the end of their meal, there’s a big zero with a line slashed through it in the ‘tip’ field. My face burns with anger and shame. I snag a twenty dollar bill out of my wallet, tuck it into the bill folder along with the credit card slip, and bring them both to the register.
“I saw that,” Kellen says out of the corner of his mouth as I close out the order in the system. “He stiff you?” I nod, jaw set. “Put your money back. It happens sometimes.”
“There’s no reason why you all should pay for my mistakes. He’s right. He got terrible service.” I slide the twenty into the till before he can protest further and go to check on the next table.
Three hours later, there are only a few patrons left, and they’re all meandering over their drinks under Livvy’s supervision. Drew is busy wiping down tables, and I’m sitting at the bar rolling cutlery into napkins for tomorrow’s service.
“Despite what you think, you did all right,” Kellen says, busy with his own tasks.
“It’s hard work,” I say, glad to be off my feet for a bit. “I’ve never worked as a server before. When I was in college I used to do overnights at a convenience store. It wasn’t as bad as you think,” I tell him when I see his sympathetic wince. “It was usually pretty quiet, and I worked alone, so I could study in between customers.”
“You ever get robbed?”
“Once, sort of,” I say. “A guy came in with a knife and told me to empty the till, but I said he was screwing up his whole life, and he should be ashamed of himself. He ended up telling me all about himself, how desperate he was to feed his family, and he didn’t know what else to do. In the end, I gave him fifty bucks of my own money in exchange for a promise he wouldn’t go around robbing places anymore, and he left.” I’m laughing at the naiveté of my twenty-year-old self. Kellen looks incredulous.
“You’re an incredible woman, you know?” he says.
“Incredibly stupid, you mean. He could have stabbed me. I never did see him again. I’ve always wondered if he turned out all right.” I move on to filling the salt and pepper shakers. “Thanks for encouraging me to do this,” I tell him. “I learned way more about how the pub runs by being in the thick of it than by doing a walk-through.”
“I’m glad. You up for anything later? Maybe try and finish that movie we started last night?”
I snort. We hadn’t made it through more than twenty minutes before I flipped down the screen of his laptop and we rolled off the couch, a mess of tangled limbs, half-unclothed, and laughing hysterically. What was I supposed to do when he kept nibbling at my ear?
“Only if we’re staying here, and if you’ll rub my feet. They’re killing me. Next time you’re going to conscript me, warn me ahead of time so I can pick some better footwear.” The ballet flats I’m wearing are cute but don’t offer any support.
“Deal. See you upstairs in a bit.” He winks as I disappear into the back.
It’s been an exhausting day, but everything feels all right, I reflect as I stretch myself out on the couch, wiggling my toes, now free of their prisons. I’m happy, I realize suddenly. Genuinely happy with my life. It’s an unfamiliar enough feeling that I need to reflect for a moment to make sure that’s what I’m experiencing. Despite the uncertainty of the future, the challenges ahead, and the rollercoaster of emotions I’ve been through over the past two weeks, there’s a solid core of warmth, of conviction, that’s been growing inside me. It tells me I’m doing the right thing, and that maybe, just maybe, I’ve finally found my home.
***
The next two weeks pass by fairly uneventfully, at least for me. Bill Blackmoor, Marnie, and Irene Bell all have their memorial services at the church in Soberly. I pay my respects at them all, not only hoping it will increase my acceptance around town, but also because I had genuinely liked them during our short acquaintance. Learning about the inn takes up almost all my time—if I’m not sifting through the paperwork Roz left behind, I’m shadowing various staff members on their jobs, from housekeeping to the man who comes twice a week to trim the grass and weed the garden beds. I’m surprised when he shows me the boundaries of the property. The inn is on a decent-sized parcel of land and has a large lawn alongside the pub.
“We should build a patio,” I muse out loud to Kellen one day as I stare out at the lawn. He’s persuaded me to take the day off and spend the afternoon at the beach with him, and we’re just leaving the inn.
“This is supposed to be a no-work day, remember? No thinking about patios today,” he chides me as we walk toward the lounge chairs. Both he and Naomi have mentioned several times that I’m going too hard, and I need to ease off a bit. Even Drew told me I looked tired yesterday.
To be honest, I am exhausted, and for the past few days when I wake up, I’m nauseous thinking about getting out of bed and facing the world. Cora’s still a hair short of being openly hostile and is the only one who doesn’t welcome my questions about the inn and its operations. It’s been Jana who’s trained me on the front desk services and the booking software we use. I also learn that, unlike what I assumed, she doesn’t stay at the desk overnight, only until midnight, at which point the phone line is automatically forwarded to Cora’s personal phone for any emergencies. I get Jana to switch it to my own number since I’m living here anyway. Sheena did renew her offer for me to stay with her, but she didn’t seem as enthusiastic about becoming roommates when she mentioned it the second time around.
Sheena’s been different since I shared my secret with her. It’s subtle, but I catch her looking at me strangely sometimes like she’s trying to figure out if I’m mentally sound or not. I’m trying my best to ignore it, hoping that with some time, she’ll see I’m the same person as always. Since that talk at her kitchen table, she hasn’t brought up the subject of the killings once, although she did mention she’d had no luck finding her past self, the writer, via some Google searches. She didn’t ask me to try and access another vision of him, and I didn’t offer. From her body language—the way she’s always aware of my proximity to her, and the way she holds herself a little apart—it’s obvious to me that she doesn’t want to make any skin-to-skin contact with me. It saddens me, but I have to respect it.
“What are you thinking about?” Kellen asks me as he drags an umbrella over to our chaises. “You look like you’re a million miles from here.”
“Nothing.” Everything. The inn. The way most people in Soberly are still steering clear of it. I’ve hardly seen a local in the pub these past couple of weeks. Money. Time to do all the things I need to, like make a trip back to New Mexico to pack up my apartment and bring what few possessions I care about back here. All of it is weighing on me, and none of it I can delegate to anyone else. While I appreciate Kellen’s desire for me to relax for a day, it feels like it puts more pressure on the rest of the week by leaving more things undone to catch up on later.
On top of it all, I have a vicious case of heartburn, which only worsens as I lay back in my chaise, a radiant pain rising up from my midsection all the way to the base of my throat. I toss and turn several times,
trying to find a position that will make it abate even slightly. In the end, I have to bring the back of the chaise up to almost ninety degrees so I’m sitting upright before the pain subsides a bit.
“I need to cut back on the coffee,” I say, rubbing my chest futilely. I thought I had been—I’m down to only a couple cups in the morning now. If I have to quit coffee altogether, I don’t know how I’ll function. I’m too reliant on it in the morning to get my brain in gear.
“Why don’t you take my car and grab some antacids later today,” he suggests. The pharmacy is still closed, and I’ve heard Marnie’s husband Gord is planning on selling it and moving out of Soberly to be closer to family. In the meantime, the next closest drug store is in the big box store fifteen minutes up the highway. “Or do you want to go right now?” We’d rummaged in the medicine cabinet in his house earlier for any but had come up empty-handed.
“No, later is fine.”
The fact that there haven’t been any more deaths in Soberly is at least one thing that brings me a sense of relief. I had almost expected them to continue at the same rate of two or three a week, but there hasn’t been a hint of violence at all. Maybe it was just someone passing through town. I’ve been repeating this thought again and again for the past few days, hoping it’s true.
Although the news spread like wildfire throughout the town, Kellen hasn’t mentioned a word about Irene Bell’s death being a murder instead of natural causes like he had first believed, nor has he discussed Marnie’s murder with me since the first morning we had breakfast at his house. Thanks to the way Sheena’s pulled away, I’m afraid to bring the subject up with him or fill him in on my ability. The thought of him silently questioning whether I’m stable or not and seeing him slowly start to become more distant fills me with dread. Yet, not being able to share such a fundamental part of myself with him feels like I’m cheating him out of knowing the real me. He deserves better, that dark voice in the back of my head keeps telling me, and I start to muster up the courage to tell him. Then I remember Sheena snatching her hand away from beside mine when I dropped into her shop to give her an update on some of the bootlegging research I’d done in my spare time, and to show her a book I’d ordered on the topic that had arrived. All my courage dissolves at that point.
I’ve been almost equally cagey with stories of my childhood. Kellen’s probably figured out I didn’t have a good one, and other than telling him I don’t have any siblings and am estranged from my parents, he knows virtually nothing about my life before college other than Roz’s visit when I was twelve. It’s hard, sometimes, to see how he is with his mom, knowing I’m never going to have that sort of family relationship. I don’t know if he picks up on it or not, but I’m pretty sure Naomi has. When we’re at the inn she’s strictly professional, like Kellen is, but in her home, I’m encircled with a mixture of warmth and sternness that feels like she’s hugging me with her words, even when she’s lecturing me about working too much, and reminding me that Roz wouldn’t have wanted for me to make myself sick over learning the ropes.
It’s Naomi that’s finally been able to satiate my need for stories about my aunt. Having known her longer than pretty much anyone in town, she had countless anecdotes to share with me over cups of tea, and more often than not, a plate of homemade cookies. My favorite stories were the ones about all her growing pains and missteps when she first bought the inn, and how, eventually, she began to put her own mark on it.
“Now you’re in her shoes,” she told me one evening. “You’ll make plenty of mistakes along the way, have no doubt, but you’ll also make it your own. There’ll come a time when people won’t think of it as Roz’s place anymore. They’ll all call it Audrey’s.” Her words had brought tears to my eyes, both because I wanted badly to reach the point where I was accepted at that level, and also because I didn’t want people here to forget about my aunt.
Maybe I could use some of that bare lawn space to put in a memorial garden for her, I consider now. A mix of perennials, medicinal plants, and kitchen herbs, something a little untamed, like Roz was, but with benches for reading and a shade tree or two. I grab my phone and start to type up some notes.
“Hey, put that away,” Kellen says. His eyes are still closed, but he must have heard my nails tapping on the screen. “No work today.”
“How do you know it’s work?” I counter, stalling for time while I try and finish getting all my thoughts out.
“Pardon me. Is it for work?”
“Sort of. Sort of not.”
“Does your brain ever stop?”
“Very rarely. This whole lying around doing nothing is hard for me. You could have at least let me bring a book.” He’d been insistent that I’d have no distractions, but I’ve never been comfortable sitting with nothing to do.
“I was hoping you’d nap.” He pauses for a moment. “You really don’t look well, Audrey. I’m worried about you, for real. You’re hardly eating, and you don’t look like you’re getting much sleep either.”
“I’m not.” I pinch the bridge of my nose with my index finger and my thumb. “I can’t sleep sitting up like this.”
“Sorry. This wasn’t a good idea, I guess.” He starts to pack up the bag we brought.
“No, I’m sorry. I appreciate the thought behind it. You can’t help if I’m feeling gross right now. If this heartburn would ease up I’d be able to sleep better and eat too. Everything seems to set it off. I’ve never experienced anything like it before. Maybe I will go to the pharmacy now. I’ve been hoping it would clear up on its own. I hate taking any sort of medication.”
He hands over his keys, and after slipping on a cover-up I drive myself to the next town over, parking as close to the doors as possible. The shock of the heat after having the air conditioning at full blast makes me wince.
I’m concentrating on getting a basket unstuck from the stack inside the door when someone slams roughly into my side, knocking me sideways.
Pavel stood staring at the knife sticking out of his chest, shocked by its appearance there. It felt as though he was looking at someone else’s body, because there was no pain at all, nothing that indicated he had been stabbed, other than the leather-wrapped hilt in the center of his chest. ‘What a strange thing,’ he thought to himself. His legs gave out from under him, and he dropped to his knees, but there was still no sense of intrusion. He couldn’t even remember why the blade was there in the first place—the entire notion was so perplexing to him. He opened his mouth to ask someone, but instead of words, a stream of blood came forth and ran down his chin, dripping onto the hilt. Pavel died with his eyes wide open, still trying to figure out what exactly had happened.
“Watch it, bitch,” the person says as I narrowly keep myself from falling sideways. It’s Aaron Glass, the man Kellen punched a couple weeks ago. He’s leaving the store by the same door I came in, carrying a shopping bag in each hand and doesn’t look back. I pick up the basket I dropped and try to shrug it off. I’m disturbed by the brief vision, both of its violent content and the fact that I’m once again reminded of Kellen’s version as the man who inflicted the deadly wound. Curious that Aaron was Pavel in a past life, and that he and Kellen have found conflict again in this one. Upon further reflection, however, if people have positive relationships with others throughout their lifetimes, it makes sense that they can have antagonistic ones carry forward as well. I’ve just never seen it so plainly before.
Faced with a number of options for heartburn in the pharmacy section of the store, I grab the extra-strength version of the brand I see advertised on TV and give the directions a quick scan. This is the first time in my life I’ve ever suffered from the condition, and I have new sympathy for an old coworker of mine who had a terrible case of it all throughout her pregnancy.
The blood in my veins suddenly freezes. Pulling my phone out of my shoulder bag, I call up the calendar app, scroll back to the previous month, then count forward. Then I count forward again with my fingers to mak
e sure. With trembling hands, I add another product to my basket and ring myself through at a self-checkout.
An hour later, locked in the bathroom of my suite, I have the answer to my heartburn source and my worst fears realized at the same time.
I’m pregnant.
21
It takes me very little time to make the necessary appointment, although I’m going to have to travel to Portland on Thursday for it. No waiting period, no ultrasound, no counseling session. Two courses of pills a day or two apart is all I’ll need to do to solve this problem, much to my relief. I’d been worried my only option would be a surgical procedure. I’ll probably feel a bit rough for a few days, but nothing that will keep me from functioning normally as long as I take it easy, armed with some Advil.
Once I’m done making arrangements, I give myself permission to be furious with myself. I’m never careless about birth control. For as long as I can remember, I’ve never wanted to have kids. Not only do I not particularly like them, I don’t have any maternal instinct. Any time I’ve thought about my future, children haven’t been a part of it. Yet here I am, growing another human. It feels like a parasite, leaching away my energy, stealing my nutrients, and making me sick. The sooner I can put this disaster behind me, the better, and once it’s over and done with, I’m going to find a more permanent solution to my birth control slip-up so something like this can never happen again. Maybe an IUD. Maybe I’ll opt straight for a tubal ligation and get myself sorted out for life.
In retrospect, I can’t believe I missed all the warning signs. Besides the period that’s more than a week late and the heartburn, my breasts have been aching for days—so sensitive that the last time Kellen spent the night I wouldn’t let him touch them. I’ve also had almost constant nausea, which I’d chalked up to all the stress around the inn and tension with Cora.