Bodies of Water by T. Greenwood Read Free Book Online Page B

figure out when it was that I got pregnant.
    I clicked out our own lights and went upstairs into our bedroom, where Frankie had, thankfully, already fallen asleep. I slipped into our bathroom and studied the vial that Eva had given me. It touched me, suddenly, that she’d gone to such trouble. Inside was a brownish liquid that looked similar to whatever had been in Ted’s flask. I touched my finger to the opening and then my finger to my tongue. It was bitter. But I took the prescribed dosage anyway and imagined what would happen if this one actually stuck.
    I also thought about how nice it would be to have a friend to share this experience with. Someone to share my troubles with. My secrets. For the first time in a long time I thought I might not feel quite so alone.

I n the morning after my swim, after a hot shower, and after my usual cup of coffee and scone at Daybreak, I head to the library where I volunteer in the children’s room three days a week. I’d always dreamed of working in a library, and now I finally do. It’s a small branch library, but I love it all the same. Our tiny beach community is self-sufficient; we have a post office, three banks, four churches, and this library. I never go into the city; I don’t have to. Everything in the world I need is here.
    There are good people in this little beach town, as all little towns, and I feel taken care of. I think about poor Mrs. Macadam sometimes, how long her dead body sat inside the house across the street from us before it was discovered. I suppose I have spent the last few years ensuring that this won’t happen to me.
    I live alone now, but I am not lonely.
    I am a creature of habit, and each of my customs involves daily interactions with my neighbors. If I don’t show up for my coffee and raspberry scone at the Daybreak Café or at the library or at Theo’s, where I get a Greek salad every day for lunch, I’ll be missed. If I fail to stop by the little pub where I like to have a pint of stout before going for my nightly swim, Juan Gaddis, the bartender, will miss me, maybe even send someone over to the cottages to check in. Once when I was sick with a cold and didn’t appear for my nightly pint, he came over himself and knocked on my door. Since Lou died, these are my caretakers. My friends.
    Each night I turn on the Christmas lights I have strung along my porch like twinkling stars, and I click them off when I wake. It is my silent signal that all is well, that I have survived another night. And in the morning, Pete, who owns and manages the cottages, delivers my newspaper to my door while I swim. He would notice if I didn’t wake up.
    Of course Gussy would also know if something were amiss. As would Francesca, if I failed to answer my phone for her Sunday call. Only Mouse might not notice, at least not right away, if I disappeared off the face of the earth.
    The fog is still thick, and I walk the six blocks from the coffee shop to the library, unable to see more than one block ahead at a time. I am surprised every time a fellow pedestrian comes into view. They appear suddenly, emerging from the haze like apparitions: Bob Hudson, who owns the jewelry shop; a floppy-haired teenage boy on a skateboard; a sullen homeless woman in a bathrobe and boots, clutching a battered phone book under her arm. I see her most mornings; sometimes she asks me if I have a quarter so she can make a call. I wonder who she’s looking for in those tattered pages.
    It’s chilly without the sun, but I also know that by noon the sun will have won in this struggle with the fog. For now, I wrap my cardigan more tightly around me, knowing that for the walk home, I won’t need it.
    The library doesn’t open for another ten minutes, but I have to walk past a half-dozen people waiting outside. When Linda unlocks the doors they’ll all go straight to the computers. Like them, I don’t have a computer in my cottage, though Francesca keeps trying to buy me one. She went so far