Catching Air by Sarah Pekkanen Read Free Book Online

filled with coffeemakers and Crock-Pots.
    Did they need any of this stuff? Maybe she should pick up a coffeemaker; guests would definitely want coffee.
    But . . . which one? Her morning caffeine ritual involved dunking a tea bag into a pot of hot water, but here were devices that let you put a little circular pod into the top of a machine, and then a latte or caramel cappuccino or hot chocolate would magically spurt out. Alyssa loaded the coffeemaker and a few boxes of pods into her cart, then reconsidered.
    If they filled all the rooms in the house, they’d have eight guests. Some people drank two or three cups of coffee in the morning. Alyssa wasn’t a math whiz, but she could easily see that if they made one cup at a time, they’d be constantly running back and forth from the kitchen.
    So, none of those cute little pods. She unloaded the boxes and put them back on the shelves and stared at the other coffeemakers until the features advertised on their glossy boxes danced and grew blurry before her eyes: Programmable settings! Built-in grinder! Auto-shutoff!
    Maybe she should get something to eat, even if the only offerings at the little snack bar were junk—huge, gooey slices of pizza, candy bars, and sodas in plastic buckets. No, all that sugar and starch would make her feel even worse. She’d kill for a banana. But if she tried to locate them, she’d get lost forever, finding her way out the exit door only when she was a gray-haired old lady with a cane—which they probably sold here, too.
    She snuck glances at the people around her. None of them seemed to be having trouble. They were trotting briskly through the aisles, their carts filled, their wheels behaving. They looked happy, even! One woman passed, snatched a package of coffee pods from the shelf by Alyssa, and sailed on by, barely breaking her stride. Alyssa was definitely the outsider here. She’d never gotten the hang of shopping, never seen its appeal. She lived in cargo pants and T-shirts for work, slept in one of Rand’s old T-shirts, and had a few dresses for evenings out. What else did she need? She owned a lot of jewelry, but it was all handcrafted pieces she’d picked up on her travels, inexpensive trinkets that held memories and meaning.
    When she and Rand were getting ready to move to Vermont, it had taken her only a couple of hours to pack her personal belongings: her photography equipment, her journals, a few sentimental items like the pressed wildflowers from a bouquet Rand had picked for her. She’d never felt the desire to accumulate stuff; it made her feel weighed down, tethered in place.
    Cooking was Kira’s domain; she should let her sister-in-law pick the coffeemaker, Alyssa finally decided, knowing it was a cop-out.
    She’d been in this store for almost an hour and her cart was empty, save for a trio of black picture frames that she’d tossed in on a whim. She’d driven an hour to get here. No way could she go home empty-handed. Rand was wielding a sander to refinish the big dining room table they’d bought secondhand, and Kira and Peter were driving up from Florida. Everyone else was managing this transition just fine—she needed to do her part. She turned her cart down a new aisle, then felt her iPhone buzzing in her pocket. The number was unfamiliar, but she answered it anyway.
    “Alyssa? This is Donna Marin with Children from China.”
    “Oh!” Alyssa said. She stopped moving, her cart squeaking to a halt. She’d never met the adoption liaison, but they’d spoken a few times during the past couple of years.
    “Things are moving along, so I was calling to check in. I tried you at home,” Donna was saying, “but that number has been disconnected.”
    “Actually, we just moved,” Alyssa said.
    Donna Marin’s voice chilled by a few degrees. “Did you notify our agency? I don’t see any notation in your file . . .”
    “No, not yet,” Alyssa said, feeling the smile drop off her face. “I mean, I was going