Lie Still by Julia Heaberlin Read Free Book Online

high-tech alarm systems for museums. Started messing around in his barn in Edna, Texas, at thirteen. One of his devices is now used in the Louvre.”
    That explained the house’s top-of-the-line security system. The artist in me liked the idea that the
Mona Lisa
was protected by a device born in a barn, like Jesus.
    “Tell me about you,” Misty said. “You ran an art gallery? And what’s the story with your husband? The word is that he’s a good-looking version of Michael Chiklis.”
    I laughed. “For his already giant ego’s sake, I won’t share that. Mike led an ATF team on special ops all over the United States, and he’s still here. Alive, I mean. And all of his guys. Every one of them.” A little pride leaked into my voice.
    “What made him take this job in Clairmont? Everybody’swondering.” Misty rose to splash water on her legs and then stretched out again beside me. “Seems like this place would drive him out of his mind after all that excitement.”
    “Frankly, we’d both like a lot
less
excitement. Mike’s thirty-five. I’m thirty-two. New York saps you. It’s a very hard place to live. And we never knew when he’d be assigned to a case and have to take off.”
    I laid a hand on my stomach.
    “This baby is a reason to change. Even if it’s just for a few years, this is a good break for us.” I was glad the sunglasses hid tears stinging behind my eyes. Damn hormones. I wasn’t going to open up to this reticent new friend about the miscarriages.
    “It seems like it would be hard to give up everything that you’ve both worked for.” Misty’s voice sounded wistful.
    “Don’t get me wrong. I loved my job. Helping people pick out beautiful things to live with. Giving a break every now and then to a young artist. But I could easily slip into a seventy-hour work week before an opening, especially if Mike was working and I had nothing to go home to. I had no time or space in our apartment to paint. What about you?”
    “I’m in an in-between phase,” Misty replied vaguely. “Trying to figure out what’s next.”
    She said earlier over our salads that she attended USC but she didn’t say when or claim a degree or say what she studied. She’d managed to sidestep all of my questions about her family or her childhood. She didn’t spare any goopy emotion on her husband. I couldn’t put my finger on her accent, blunted, an accent from nowhere.
    Still, I liked her. I understood the layers of the private soul.
    The house, oddly silent, felt empty of spirits other than Misty’s. The stillness wasn’t even disturbed by the friendly rumble of a refrigerator, but then hers was a sleek machine and not the ten-year-old Maytag that came with our home.
    “When will Todd be back?” I asked.
    “He’s overseeing the building of a corporate headquarters in Osaka right now. I’d guess three months. Maybe four.” Alone in a grand house, lots of windows, no man.
Turn on that cowboy’s alarm, girl
.
    Misty tilted the Evian bottle toward her lips even though it was empty.
    I had detected an edge in her voice, but before I could say anything she got up, murmuring about a kink in the pool sweeper.
    I lay back and drifted, letting the sun soak my brain like crack cocaine.
    She returned five minutes later and our talk grew superficial and drowsy, with longer and longer pauses in between. We fell quiet. When my eyes opened again, the sun had started its descent and the chair beside me was empty, Misty’s towel tossed over the edge.
    I must have drifted off. I dug through my beach bag for my cell phone. Almost four. Good grief. All the books said I’d be suffused with energy at this point in the pregnancy. Instead I was nodding off like a grandmother.
    I took a quick dunk in the pool to rinse away the sweat and grease, and toweled myself off.
    “Misty?” I entered the tiled mud room, although I guess in a modern masterpiece like this it was called something grander. A mini–washer and dryer were