Trying to keep my eyes on the road after I arrived in California last week, I groped in my handbag for my cell phone. With a thumb, I scrolled to the entry for Matt. A lot of people in Pleasant Valley go to sleep at ten or earlier, and I prayed as I listened to one, then two, then three rings, that Matt and his wife weren\u2019t among them.<\/p>\n
\u201cHello?\u201d It was a woman\u2019s voice.<\/p>\n
\u201cHi!\u201d I tried to sound cheerful. \u201cYou must be Penny!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m Matt\u2019s step sister! Maybe he mentioned that we ran into each other a few weeks ago.”<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, Anne! Yes. How are you?\u201d She sounded as if she were greeting an old friend. One whose name she had somehow forgotten.<\/p>\n
\u201cAdrienne.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAdrienne, Adrienne, I\u2019m sorry. Matthew isn\u2019t home right now, he\u2019s still at work.”<\/p>\n
My car swerved with disappointment.”<\/p>\n
“I\u2019m holding down the fort. He\u2019ll be so happy that you called. If he doesn\u2019t call you back tonight, it\u2019ll be first thing tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n
A second of hesitation and I blurted, \u201cI\u2019m in Pleasant Valley!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou are? How wonderful! When will we get a chance to see you?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m\u2026 I don\u2019t know.\u201d Obviously I couldn\u2019t stay there if Matt was out. \u201cI\u2019ll call tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere are you staying?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m actually not sure.\u201d My face heated the darkness. \u201cI\u2019m looking for a motel.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA motel? You should come here!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI wouldn\u2019t want to impose.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAdrienne, it\u2019s not imposition!\u201d Her voice rose an octave. \u201cYou\u2019re family! And I\u2019ve been dying<\/p>\n
to meet you ever since Matt said he ran into you at the Plaza. Do you have our address?\u201d<\/p>\n
I paused three beats more, then gave in to what I wanted. Her manner made it all sound so normal, so natural. She and Matt lived in a new development that didn\u2019t even exist when I left Pleasant Valley. So Penny launched into some of the most detailed directions I\u2019ve ever gotten.<\/p>\n
In half an hour I was standing on the doorstep of their condominium, with my head half turned to catch any motion from the two slumbering kids in the backseat of the Escort.<\/p>\n
The woman who opened the door looked less frowsy than her photograph, and older. I guessed she was Matt\u2019s senior by at least five years. Somehow a dead oak leaf had entwined in the neglected swirls of her long gray-brown hair. Square jaws gave her face a heavy-duty heft that was only slightly softened by her grandmotherly spectacles. She wore a man\u2019s T-shirt \u2013 obviously one of Matt\u2019s because it had the GenTron logo on it \u2013 that hung to her knees. Her tan, unshaved shins and her feet were bare beneath that, so it wasn\u2019t immediately clear whether she had anything else on at all. Moist eyes searched me over. \u201cArianna!\u201d She held the door open with a hand too large for her body. \u201cCome in!\u201d<\/p>\n
Embarrassment nailed me to her doormat as I realized I had forgotten to mention the kids. \u201cActually my kids are sound asleep. I don\u2019t know. You probably don’t have room for us all.”
\nShe sucked a gasp of air. \u201cYou brought your kids! Matt will be so pleased!\u201d Where are they?\u201d<\/p>\n
She peered past me. \u201cBring them in!\u201d<\/p>\n
Penny\u2019s and Matt\u2019s place was a narrow townhouse with three internal staircases; instead of stacking units one on top of the other, the architect had wedged them side-by-side, so the garage and master bedroom were on the first floor, a living room open to the kitchen on the second, and a spare bedroom that Penny and Matt used as office and laboratory on the third.<\/p>\n
Outside was clean white stucco and neatly trimmed ice plant. Inside was something else. Penny and Matt had combined antique ottomans, armoires and stained glass lamps inherited from Penny\u2019s grandparents with colorfully upholstered modern pieces for an effect that would have been dizzying, even if the rooms were tidy.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
But when I arrived, every table top and counter was heaped with text books, student papers, photographs, dirty soup bowls, bottles of acids, preservatives, staining agents. I couldn\u2019t picture my kids in that space for even one morning, and carrying Chloe in, I almost turned right around again.<\/p>\n
Penny had already relieved the sofa bed of its stack of academic journals. \u201cHow\u2019s this,\u201d she asked, hoisting an oscilloscope. \u201cWill they be comfortable here?\u201d She caught my expression.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cUh oh. Is something wrong?\u201d<\/p>\n
A wave of exhaustion hit me. We\u2019d leave first thing in the morning, I told myself, before a test tube could get broken. And at that moment, I just didn\u2019t have the strength to find my way back to the highway.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, nothing. You have really remarkable stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThanks.\u201d She twinkled, amused at my faint praise. We laid the two kids out. Chloe remaining limp, Dante\u2019s eyes opening only enough to see my face over him before he slipped back under. Penny, who had disappeared upstairs, came back down with a stack of blankets which we spread over them. \u201cNow,\u201d she said. \u201cI promised you tea didn\u2019t I? And then I want to hear all about you and growing up with Matt and your childhood together. Only a mile or two from here, isn\u2019t that right?\u201d She turned the flame on the stove.<\/p>\n
\u201cThanks,\u201d I said. \u201cWhat time will Matt be home?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know. It depends on how the work is going.\u201d Penny was opening the kitchen cupboards one after another. \u201cI used to have some cookies in here, but every time I bring sweets into the house Matthew throws them out. It\u2019s the most maddening thing, this Dean Ornish stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou should have seen him as a kid!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes?\u201d She came over and sat down next to me on the edge of the sofa bed, her eyes smiling into mine. \u201cI want to hear about that.\u201d<\/p>\n
I started to describe him when the kettle whistled. Penny got up. \u201cMaybe I\u2019ll just lie down for a minute,\u201d I said. I never heard her answer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Trying to keep my eyes on the road, I groped in my handbag for my cell phone. With a thumb, I scrolled to the entry for Matt. A lot of people in Pleasant Valley go to sleep at ten or earlier, and I prayed as I listened to one, then two, then three rings, that Matt and his wife weren\u2019t among them.<\/p>\n
\u201cHello?\u201d It was a woman\u2019s voice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,41,63,64,53,61,62,10,22],"class_list":["post-758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adrienne","tag-digital-fiction","tag-interactive-novel","tag-online-fiction","tag-online-novel","tag-poly","tag-poly-fiction","tag-poly-novel","tag-polyamory","tag-polyamory-novel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=758"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1040,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758\/revisions\/1040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}