Going for Kona by Pamela Fagan Hutchins Read Free Book Online Page B

misunderstanding and that Adrian was coming home.
    “Do you want to talk?”
    “Michele?” Brian used a whisper tone at half volume. It carried softly from downstairs.
    I patted Sam and slipped down the stairs, feeling guilty that I was relieved to escape. “Yes?”
    “It’s eight thirty. Evelyn is here. I straightened up your kitchen and ran another load of laundry. Is there anything else you need?”
    “No, Brian, no, you have been great to me, but my parents will be here,” I glanced at the clock, “any minute.”
    At the front door, Brian touched the mezuzah again and kissed his fingertips. I closed the door behind him and the click of the latch falling into place seemed unnaturally loud. I stood in the entryway, listening. No sound from Annabelle, nothing from Sam. Outside was quiet as death, too, and it was all that I had left, this nothingness. The only sound at all was the beat of my heart crashing in my ears. I froze in place and felt time slow until it seemed to stop. I floated above myself, and then away to a place where everything was a dark, endless blue. A part of me remained in Houston and the rest of me slipped into that other dimension, a limbo from which I couldn’t move forward. The silence kept growing until it was louder than my heartbeat, until it shrieked in my head like a banshee. I clapped my hands over my ears and that untethered part of me fell back into the here and now, ripping and tearing my insides as it tumbled back into place. I didn’t know if I could take this, or if I wanted to try.
    The doorbell rang. I glanced up at the clock in the dining room. Nine o’clock. Thirty minutes had just vanished from my life. I had lost time again. Still, I couldn’t move, and I stared at the door. It flew open and I blinked. My parents rushed in, my tall blonde mother filling the space around me and changing its shape. I opened my mouth but nothing came out, so I yielded to her force before she said a word.
    Papa rushed in. “Itzpa.” He put his arms around me and tried not to let me see that he was crying, too.

Chapter Four
    The alarm on my phone didn’t know that Adrian had died, and it chirped at five a.m. “Adrian, Michele, get up! Time to train! It’s going to be a great day!” it seemed to say. I considered smashing it to bits.
    What day was it? I counted back and realized it was only Sunday, but for the life of me, I didn’t know what had happened to Saturday. A kaleidoscope of gray images whirled in my head. Tears, Sam angry, sleeping, Papa’s hugs, Annabelle bereft, sleeping, and my mother taking care of all of us. Yes, that was Saturday.
    Precious didn’t know that Adrian had died either, and I could hear her helpful meow outside the bedroom door. She took her role as morning drill sergeant to the Hanson family seriously, and she enjoyed it in a restrained manner befitting her felinity. She allowed no deviations from schedule. Her claws clicked on the tile and I could picture the agitated swish of her caramel tail as she paced back and forth.
    I pushed snooze. I hadn’t planned for this moment. The melatonin and Benadryl I had taken the night before were still fogging my head. My heart lay inert inside my chest, and my brain processed with the efficiency of a plate of scrambled eggs, but my body tingled and itched to get up and
do
it. It was Sunday, and it was time to train. Ah, paradox, go to hell, I thought.
    Maybe it was the right thing to do, though: stay in my routine, drain my anxiety with exercise, and take care of myself. It was normalcy. It was moving on.
    Maybe it was, except that it felt wrong to be alive, much less doing our things without Adrian. And really, I didn’t want to move on. I wanted to stay in bed, under our sheets that smelled like my husband, and pretend he was still there with me.
    The alarm blared again. Without further thought, I gave in to the habit, the obsession, in a way that Adrian would have understood and applauded. I dug in my workout