Live to Tell by Wendy Corsi Staub Read Free Book Online Page B

that, it will be Labor Day; back to schedules and routines. Lauren might actually be looking forward to that. She isn’t sure.
    Why don’t I ever know what I want anymore?
    “Here.”
    She looks up to see Ryan standing over her again, holding out her keys. His fingernails are, she notices, bitten down to stubs.
    “Did you lock the car?”
    “You only told me to five times.”
    “So did you?”
    “Yes! Okay? Yes!”
    “Don’t speak to me in that tone. Did you find a ten?”
    “I found a twenty.”
    “You don’t need—”
    “I know, but you didn’t have a ten.”
    “Bring me the change, okay?”
    “Okay!” he says, as if he thinks she’s told him that five times, too. He looks over toward the snack bar. His friends are already at a picnic table, eating.
    “Mom—your keys.”
    “Put them back in my bag, Ry.”
    He huffs over, drops them in. She opens her mouth to tell him to push them down inside so they won’t fall out, but he’s already dashing toward the snack bar.
    The camp didn’t just send her back a man, she notes, climbing out of the pool; they sent her back a mercurial, derisive man, very much like…
    No. That’s not fair.
    Just because Ryan looks like Nick—that doesn’t mean he’s picked up on the way Nick treats her these days and is following suit. It’s just his age.
    Regardless of his new moodiness, Lauren reminds herself, sitting on her chair and toweling off, Ryan isn’t Nick.
    Her gaze falls on a nearby mom who is kneeling on a blanket, doling out Goldfish crackers and juice boxes to several look-alike children.
    Watching her, sensing her contentment, Lauren feels as though she knows her—knows her life, anyway.
    You’re married, and your husband works in the city , she guesses. You’re living happily ever after here in suburbia—or at least you think you are .
    I was you. I had your life. I took it for granted, just the way you are.
    There’s still a tiny part of her that would give anything to have those days back again, blinders and all.
    There’s another part of her, though, that would never go back, not even if she could have known what was coming. No, especially not knowing what was coming.
    Two summers ago, after her father-in-law died of cancer, she and Nick had discussed that very topic in the car on the way home from the funeral in Baltimore.
    Would you rather die a slow death and have the chance to say good-bye, or would you prefer to die in an accident and never know what hit you?
    Nick took the latter option. She couldn’t understand it. Not back then.
    “One minute you’re here, the next you’re not?” she shuddered. “I’d rather know what was coming, even if it was horrible, so that I could prepare myself and the kids.”
    “You mean if you were the one who was going to die, or if I were?”
    “If I were. Or if you were. Either way, I’d rather know.”
    “Not me. Either way, I think it’s better not to know,” Nick told her. “That way, you get to go about your daily life, same as always, until the very last second.”
    Oh, the irony.
    Nick, after all, was the one who got to know—probably a mere few months after that conversation—that their marriage was doomed.
    Lauren was the one who got to go about her daily life, same as always, until the very last second.
    She grasped, the moment she found out about Beth, that her own life as she knew it was over. Just like that. Just like being hit by a truck.
    Yes, she forced Nick through the motions—counseling, talking, dating, sex—but she really had no illusions about saving their marriage. Maybe she was trying to make it harder on him.
    Or maybe she was just trying to do it her way, after all. Trying to buy time, to prepare to say good-bye.
    Across the grass, the young mom packs away the extra Goldfish crackers and juice boxes, probably looking ahead to more of the same tomorrow. Probably thinking about heading home, and getting the kids cleaned up, and making dinner in time for her husband to