Losing Charlotte by Heather Clay Read Free Book Online Page A

the message opened, dizzying herself with a small rush of speed and air and messy scenery before stilling the chair and herself with her feet, read:
You know, I thought about it, and you are ugly. Can’t believe I didn’t see it before. Love, Mar
    Knox laughed out loud. From the other side of the barn, the mare snorted in response.
    “Hey,” came a voice behind her. Knox turned in the chair and saw Ned standing in the doorway.
    “Oh—”
    “What’s so funny?” Ned let the screen door catch on its loose spring and bounce against his back, where it rested. His glasses were smudged and glinted pink in the sunset light from the window when he cocked his head.
    She smiled. “Nothing. Marlene’s a shit. You surprised me.”
    “Didn’t mean to.”
    Knox stretched her arms up and tilted her head back. She twisted her hands at the wrists, like a ballerina, a sorceress, and took a deep breath. Ned stayed where he was in the doorway. Knox held the breath, stretched farther, then exhaled, mildly taken aback that Ned wasn’t reading her movements as an invitation to move closer. She laced her fingers together and lowered them to her lap.
    “Well hi,” she said. “Charlotte thinks she’s having the babies tomorrow.”
    “I was just up at your parents’. They got a call from Bruce, said she’s going to have the surgery tonight.”
    “What?”
    “Yeah. You should go up to the house.”
    Knox blinked. “But I just talked to her,” she said. “It’s supposed to be tomorrow.”
    Ned rubbed at his chin with the back of his hand. “Well, I guess they were able to schedule it earlier. I think they want to get ’em out. You should go on up.”
    Knox gripped the arms of the swivel chair as if to push herself out of it, then paused. There was something so still in Ned’s face, though now he smiled slightly at her.
    “I shouldn’t be worried, right?” she said.
    “No. Your mom’s running around like you all just won the lottery. Everything’s fine.”
    “Mm.” The light was fading even as they spoke, and Ned’s dun-colored work clothes seemed suddenly indistinct from the outlines of the screen door, the dusty barn aisle behind him. Knox bit her lip, attempting to ground herself against a kind of creeping vertigo, wake herself up. The room was oppressively hot. She wanted to move out of it and outside, just as she, impossibly, wanted to finish the reports she’d been working on, sit alone at the desk, walk down the hill to the cabin when she was finished, get a run in before the last light, warm up some dinner. She worked to quell a strange, unsummoned annoyance at the notion that her routine had been so fatally interrupted.
    “Could you give me a ride? Or—” She saw a reticence tighten Ned’s mouth at the request, a balk that made her want to back right off, as much as it confused her. “I could walk. I’ll walk up there.”
    “Could you? One of the stallions nicked his foreleg; the groom wants me to go have a look. I’ll try to stop by after and see what’s happening.”
    “Okay.” So she was being asked to be careful with him. Perhaps that was it. Last night hadn’t drifted into the ether—nor, she realized, should she have expected it to. Not so quickly. Well, if he needed a bit of distance, she could give him that, was happy to,even under these circumstances. It was a step toward the status quo; the quicker she made it the quicker ease between them would be restored.
    “So I’ll see you later,” she said. She hoped she sounded generous, sincere. Still, she felt surprised when Ned turned as she spoke, hooking his blunted finger into the screen door’s handle.
    “Sounds good,” he said. He pushed the door open, walked through it. The soft treads of his boots made very little sound against the concrete; after two or three steps Knox felt unsure of where he was. It was only when she heard his truck’s engine turn over that she knew for certain he was out of the barn.
    Knox sank back in the