Aftermirth by Hillary Jordan Read Free Book Online

sitting at Michael’s side on a leash. Behind the desk is a stylish FEMALE CLERK, 25. This is the South: she greets them with a genuinely welcoming smile.
    CLERK
    Good evening. How may I help you?
    MICHAEL
    (tired, babbling a little)
    Hi, do you have any rooms available? We don’t have a reservation. And as you see, we have a dog. A really quiet, well-behaved dog. Well, probably everyone says that about their dog, but Izzy actually is.
    CLERK
    I believe you, sir. And dogs are welcome here. How many rooms will you be needing?
    Michael hesitates and looks at Elena, and the clerk gets very interested in her computer screen. The two of them come to a silent agreement.
    MICHAEL
    Just one room. A king, if you have it.
    CLERK
    Of course, sir.
    INT. HOTEL ROOM - NIGHT
    Michael and Elena come in, drop their bags and move into each other’s arms without a word. They don’t kiss, they just hold each other tightly.
    INT. HOTEL ROOM - NIGHT
    Michael and Elena lie entwined in the bed on top of the covers, still fully clothed, sleeping peacefully. Izzy is on Michael’s other side, sandwiching him.
    W E OVERSLEPT AND ended up having to scramble to get to the airport in time to meet Catherine’s flight. As we left the hotel room I looked back at the bed, thinking about what would almost certainly have happened there if we hadn’t been so wiped last night and in such a hurry this morning. I couldn’t feel too resentful toward the good doctor, though. If it hadn’t been for Catherine, Elena and I wouldn’t have ended up in that bed in the first place, and I wouldn’t have woken up feeling something like happy for the first time in two years.
    Elena was quiet and pensive in the car on the way to the airport. I kept casting sidelong glances at her, trying to gauge her mood, hoping she felt as good as I did, but her face gave nothing away. Ten minutes from the airport her phone chimed: a text from Catherine saying she’d landed and would meet us outside. As we pulled into the arrivals area I surveyed the people waiting to be picked up, looking for a wise, matronly type. The only woman I saw standing alone was a tall, striking brunette who bore more than a passing resemblance to Angelina Jolie. Who I’d had a thing for ever since I was sixteen and saw her in Cyborg 2 . I must have masturbated five hundred times to that video.
    â€œThere she is,” Elena said excitedly.
    â€œHow do you know?” Angelina was now waving at us.
    â€œI told her what kind of car you had. Besides, she looks just like I pictured her.”
    â€œHuh.”
    I pulled over and Elena hopped out, and before I could even put the car in park she and Catherine were hugging like they’d known each other for years and chattering away in Spanish. I went to join them, feeling a bit like an interloper.
    â€œAnd this must be Michael.” Catherine turned to me, appraising me with large green eyes that I felt sure missed next to nada, a theory she confirmed by holding out her hand instead of hugging me like she had Elena. “Thank you so much for coming,” she said. And then, “I’m very sorry about your wife.”
    â€œUh . . . you’re welcome. Me too. I mean I’m sorry too, about your brother.” I pumped her hand robotically, walloped by her beauty, which was exactly how I’d felt the one time I’d met Angelina Jolie, at a party at some muckety-muck producer’s house in Malibu. Catherine was older. The crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes said she was on the wrong side of forty-five, but you wouldn’t have known it to look at the rest of her. She was slim and fit, with lips like eiderdown pillows, long, tousled-looking brown-black hair and an hourglass figure revealed—in case anyone might miss it—by a low-cut blouse and a pair of skin-tight jeans tucked into high-heeled boots. She looked less like a therapist than a former Playboy centerfold. A