Clearer in the Night by Rebecca Croteau Read Free Book Online Page A

I didn’t tell my parents anything I didn’t flat out have to. And I regret that now. If I had talked to them—and paid attention to what they had to say to me—I could have saved myself some grief.”
    “I know,” I said, to try and halt the guilt trip before it picked up steam. “And I was going to tell you, if things got serious. But we were just—”
    “Playing,” she interjected. I nodded. Something I figured out a long time ago about lying was that it went a lot better if you let the other person tell as much of the story as possible. “It’s all fun and games until it’s not anymore. I just want you to be safe.”
    Since she’d kept condoms in the house since I was sixteen years old, I figured she was talking about more than just sex. And, really, no worries about my heart. I’d lost enough for one whole lifetime, thanks very much. “I know, Mom. But Eli’s really just not my type.” I tried to sound loving, and not exasperated, and also not like I was lying through my teeth. I mean, he wasn’t my type, in that I couldn’t ever have a guy like him, not with what I’d done and what I’d continue to do, but she didn’t know any of that, and God willing, she never would. “Besides, you always said that if I didn’t make my own mistakes, I’d never learn anything.”
    She rolled her eyes at me. “Caitlyn Alice Murphy, don’t you dare use my own lectures against me. Now, the nurses told me they’re just waiting on discharge orders. You ready to blow this hot dog stand?”
    I laughed, and didn’t correct her poor use of idiom. This was the closest we’d come to real family time in more than a decade. I’d better enjoy it while it lasted. “More than you know,” I said.
    “I assume that Shannon will be home for the next few days?” Mom asked, picking at nonexistent lint on her sleeve. In the nineties, she had rocked the sweater set; since I’d moved out, she’d apparently transitioned to this blouse-and-scarf thing that was sweeping the nation.
    “Mostly,” I said. “I mean, I haven’t talked to her, but she’s working on her papers, and I think she can do that at the apartment as well as at the library.”
    There was a brief moment when her face collapsed in on itself, and the world went dark, and all hope fled the universe. And then she was smiling and cheerful. “Of course. It makes total sense. You should be with your friends. Unless it’s an inconvenience for her.”
    Us Murphy women, constitutionally incapable of just saying what how we feel, or what we want. “Of course,” I said. “I mean, I thought about staying with you for a few days, but I know how busy you are, with church and work…”
    “It’d be no trouble at all,” Mom said, her eyes sparkling again. “I have some personal time saved up, and Ally can take my appointments for the rest of the week, and we could, I don’t know, get mani-pedis or something. We could go antiquing. You used to love that.” Yeah, when I was thirteen, and convinced that the path to happiness lay in finding as many old-looking books as possible, for the future library I’d have in my future mansion. When mani-pedis seemed grown up and luxurious, not some sort of obligation that I had to society. Things had changed, but how furious could I really be with her not knowing what I had never allowed her to know?
    “Are you sure I won’t be a bother?” There was a note of want in my voice, a stir of butterflies in my belly. She’d grabbed onto my hand and was squeezing it until I felt my bones grinding together. But I didn’t make her stop. I gripped back.
    “As if you could be,” she said.
    Oh, I could be. Even I knew that. I could be an absolute bother, but I wouldn’t be. I would make this work. Because she was looking me right in my eyes, and she was smiling, and she barely smelled like whiskey at all this morning, hardly even a little bit.

    We had to sign a million forms before they’d let us go. Discharge care and