“I’m sorry,” he said almost immediately, taking one hand off the steering wheel to reach for her. “That was meant to be a joke. A really stupid joke. Whenever I see Frank and Millie I feel guilty for being alive when Colleen is dead. I find those visits really hard. Awkward.”

No kidding.

“Yes. I found it very awkward myself,” she said. I sat on your dead wife’s grave! These grass stains will never come out!

“I’m sorry,” he said again, putting his hand back on the steering wheel. “Really. You were wonderful today. I’m so grateful to you for coming. I just wish…”

His voice drifted away, and then he stopped talking and frowned at the road ahead, as if driving now required all his concentration.

What did he mean? I just wish you hadn’t cried? I just wish Colleen wasn’t dead? Ellen silently boiled and bubbled with different emotions she couldn’t even properly define: shame, resentment and something like fear. This is not me. I am not like this.

She broke the silence when they stopped at a red light. “So, I guess you won’t have time to move those boxes tonight.”

Even while she was saying it, another part of her looked on, coolly observing and shaking her head. Oh, Ellen. You feel guilty about embarrassing him with your tears, so this is your childish way of pointing out that he’s not perfect either. You’re picking a fight because you want to make something happen.

“I told you I’ve got to work this afternoon,” he said.

“So maybe we can make next weekend the new deadline?” she said, and her tone was light and humorous, but just like his joke, it had that fine thread of steel running through the center of it.

“Don’t nag me, Ellen,” he said, and as she turned to look at his profile she saw that he was clenching his jaw so tightly his cheek was hollow.

“Nagging? How am I nagging?”

“Not now. Not here,” he hissed, turning his head slightly to indicate Jack in the backseat, as though she’d deliberately picked a fight in front of his young, impressionable son.

They didn’t say another word for the rest of the drive home. Ellen spent the entire time reliving that weekend in the mountains with Jon, deliberately lingering over the memories of their lovemaking. It was the most passive-aggressive thing she’d ever done.

By the time they got home the air in the car was stuffy with silence.

“I’ll see you later,” said Patrick shortly, before driving off and leaving Ellen to take Jack inside. She would have to remember to cancel her coffee with Julia before she got started on homework.

“What’s this?” said Ellen as she opened the screen door.

There was a foil-wrapped package sitting next to the front door. She bent down and picked it up. It felt warm.

Her breath quickened. Saskia.

It was an impulse decision. I walked into her kitchen with the plastic bag full of ingredients and it was like I was returning home from the supermarket. I thought, Why not cook some biscuits for them?

I enjoyed being in her kitchen, using her mixing bowl, her spoons, her baking trays. I have a feeling most of the things in her kitchen probably belonged to her grandmother. I remember her saying that she hadn’t changed anything much when she inherited the house. “I have sort of retro taste,” she told me once. I’d made some remark about liking the carpet. I guess that’s something we have in common; apart from Patrick, of course.

I felt strangely peaceful, like I had every right to be in this house, as if I were Ellen, and Patrick and Jack were out somewhere and I was planning on surprising them with freshly baked biscuits, like I used to do when Jack was little and they went out to the park. I imagined them coming home, the sound of the key in the lock, the pounding of Jack’s footsteps down the hallway.

Ellen’s kitchen reminded me a lot of my mother’s—perhaps that’s why I felt so inappropriately comfortable, because I felt like I was in my childhood home. I remembered being a little girl, standing on a kitchen chair, one of Mum’s aprons tied around my waist, helping her cook. I’d always imagined doing the same thing with my little girl one day.

In fact, I did do the same thing with Jack, except I never bothered with the apron, and I didn’t stand him on a chair, I just let him sit up on the bench top next to me. He loved it. Flour in his hair, sticky fingers, eggshell in the mix. I let him use the beaters once and he lifted them up and splattered the entire kitchen with cake mix.

How would I have explained myself if they’d come home early?

I know this seems strange, but I cannot bear my nonexistence in your lives. If I could just move in with you, maybe? If I could just sit quietly in the corner over there and watch you live? So, anyway, how was your day in the mountains? Biscuit, anyone?

They didn’t come home, but somebody did stop by.

I was just taking the biscuits out of the oven when the doorbell rang.

I jumped. Guiltily. I haven’t completely lost my mind. I know that you’re not meant to walk into someone else’s house and start making biscuits.

After the bell rang, someone started banging on the front door.

My first thought was that it was Patrick, something about the angry tone of the knocking, even though that didn’t make sense, because why wouldn’t he just walk straight in?

And then I thought maybe it was the police. Someone had seen me take the key and called them. A friendly neighbor, perhaps. Ellen is the sort to have a friendly neighbor.

I put down the tray and crept down the hallway, past Patrick’s boxes piled up all higgledy-piggledy. Poor Ellen; her house doesn’t have quite the same spiritual feel to it now, with all these dusty boxes. I wonder if she hates it, or if she is above such earthly matters. If I know Patrick, they’ll be sitting there for a long time.

I looked out the side window near Ellen’s front door and I could see a man. He’d shoved his hands in his pockets and stuck his jaw out, like he was preparing for a confrontation. He was in his forties. There was something premium-looking about him, something that said money: Maybe it was the suit, or the longish, carefully tousled haircut, or just the way he was standing with his feet firmly planted, the stance of a man who was used to being in charge.

I was intrigued.

A customer in need of a hypnotic fix?

An ex-boyfriend of Ellen’s? He didn’t seem her type. I’m sure Patrick isn’t her type either—he’s too ordinary and blokey. She should be with a pale and interesting poet, and give me back my hale and hearty surveyor.

Tags: Liane Moriarty Romance
Source: readsnovelonline.net