Inland by Kat Rosenfield Read Free Book Online Page B

financially.”
    I don’t hear my father’s reply, if he gives one. The sudden roar of blood in my ears, a surge made out of guilt, drowns everything out. I know, although he hasn’t said so, that my life has not been cheap. It’s in his face when the bills arrive, the way his mouth drags down tight at the corners before he can stop them. Five figures before the decimal point. Dwindling balances on poorly hidden bank statements. Once, back in Grand Junction, I answered the phone when a creditor called. I know enough to know that I am not just a daughter but a money pit, a black hole, an endless sucking lacuna of need.
    My father has moved away from the door. I hear his voice, rising and falling, too far away now to be anything but noise. It has a rhythm to it, ebbing like the tide. My eyelids have grown heavy.
    The air in here is thin and dry; I picture it rushing over barren mesas and brushing through sun-bleached slot canyons, passing over the long, dead stillness of the Great Basin on its way to reach my lungs. I feel it drag against my throat. It doesn’t want to go down easy, and I swallow with an effort that tastes like chalk.
    I am weightless, dreaming, floating far away, when my father’s voice dips low in acquiescence and then stops. I sense, rather than hear, his footsteps in the hall. He is standing in my doorway.
    Quietly, he says my name. But when I stir my way out of sleep, peeling my eyelids back and turning my head to answer, he has already walked away.

T H E R I V E R

C H A P T E R 9
    THERE IS SOMETHING IN THE WATER.
    It bobs in the shallows where water meets weeds, riding the barely there roll of the current. The thing is strangely shaped and out of place, a spot of orange plastic in a palette made of browns and greens. When I get closer, I can make out the curve of a tiny foot, a shock of waving, bright blond hair. A pair of painted eyes with unlikely azure lids glare blankly skyward, peering out above pinkish lips that are set in a permanent pout.
    A Barbie, set adrift without her dream house.
    Or her swimsuit.
    —
    I’m crouching to get a better look when fast footsteps thud against the dock and fifty pounds of chubby child flings itself against my back. I stumble and veer toward the edge, my feet thudding like ungainly clods, then catch myself against the short wooden post that anchors the dock in the riverbed.
    “Bee!” I shout, whirling on my attacker, more sharply than I mean to, and the little girl drops away with a wounded look. Her lip begins to jut, a pink, pouting shelf between the pudge of her rounded cheeks. It doesn’t quiver; she’s angry, not hurt. I stand, face burning, guilty even as my heart pounds an adrenaline-fueled warning in my chest. She glares at me, eyes full of accusations. I swallow hard and consciously drop my voice down to a soothing pitch.
    “Sorry, Bee, I didn’t mean to yell. It’s just that—” I take a deep breath, look back over my shoulder at the slow ooze of the river, the naked Barbie bobbing brightly in the water.
Bitch
, I think.
You make it look so easy.
    “I know!” says Bee, brightly, her pout disappearing in a happy flash of recollection. “Your daddy said you can’t swim.”
    “It’s not a question of what he says,” I mutter, but Bee isn’t paying attention; she’s already back beside me, the brief rebuff forgotten, showing me the reason for Barbie’s lonely abandonment in the soggy depths. A length of fishing line is looped around the doll’s neck, invisible in the water, tethering her to one of the metal cleats that sailors might use to moor their boats. When we first got here, the sight of them—that familiar metal anchor with its overhanging lip—filled me with sudden sadness before I could understand why. Before I remembered, all at once, that our sailboat’s slip on the Pacific coast was studded with those same small, sturdy mounts.
    —
    It was one month ago when we arrived, in the dark, a damp, pitch-night in late July.