Real Life & Liars by Kristina Riggle Read Free Book Online Page A

rolltop desk. He puts his head on my shoulder, and I put my cheek on the top of his head. Sitting down, we’re the same height. He’s all legs, my Max.
    “Yeah, that’s something. I mean, with all that’s going on…”
    “Not that she knew. But still. I would have flown to Vegas for a shotgun wedding to a stranger, at least I would have been there.”
    “Shotgun? You don’t think…”
    I wave my hand. “No, I don’t. All the birth control available today? Anyway, that’s no reason to get married these days. Heck, we didn’t think so, and that was thirty-seven years ago.”
    “I guess you’re right.” Max sinks back to his position, nestled next to me.
    “Aren’t I always?”
    Something in Max goes wire-taut. There are all these trip wires in our conversations. Any reference to the future—like Ivan mentioning the Grammys—or anything permanent at all, reverberates in us like the mournful clang of an enormous church bell.
    Now that my heart has slowed down from the fifty-yard dash, I can sort out my mosaic of feelings. Shock, certainly. We’d never even heard of this guy, and Irina? I would expect Ivan to up and marry someone out of nowhere, out of desperation. Irina got married. Makes no sense at all, unless she was trying to shock us.
    “Mira, honey?”
    “Can we just sit, please? I need some quiet.”
    Max falls instantly silent. He’s so deferential lately that I know he would sit there, immobile and silent, all night if I asked him to. Maybe he thinks that if he’s sweet enough to me now, he can erase that awful fight and dispel the bitter hangover that tinges our moments.
    Trying to shock us by marrying a black man makes no sense, however. We’re as liberal as they come, and the last people to give a fig about an interracial marriage. Maybe Katya would have her conventional feathers ruffled, but tight-ass though she may be, she’s no bigot.
    Now, I feel robbed. It’s not enough that this disease—now I feel like Max, I can’t even think the word right now—could steal so much life away from me, Christmases I might never see, great-grandchildren I might never hold. But for Irina to get married and steal away my chance to be there for her…
    She didn’t know. Maybe Max was right, and we should have told them right away. But day after day when I tried to pick up the phone, I could not. They would call me, and still I could not find the words. And I didn’t yet have the answers to the questions I knew they would ask. Like, what are you going to do?
    Max has suggested that we lie and tell them that there is nothing to be done whatsoever, so they won’t know that I’ve decided, consciously decided, to do nothing. I know he thinks I’ll change my mind, and the children could then believe there’s been some miracle of medicine to spare me.
    I’m emotional, I’ll tell her. I’ll tell Irina that I overreacted because of the anniversary party and the passage of time, which has gotten me all weepy. I can’t tell her the truth yet. Let my children live in happy ignorance—the same happy ignorance I swam around in like amniotic fluid for years as I blew off mammograms and pap smears—let my children have at least the anniversary party to themselves, before I lower the boom.

CHAPTER 11
Katya
    GALLOPING FEET POUND DOWN THE STAIRS, AND KATYA COCKS AN ear to listen: Yes, it seems to be all three of the kids barreling down the steps. Darius is answering her questions politely, though he does seem a bit guarded. Was that a slight edge in his voice describing his job? Is there maybe a tinge of defensiveness when talking about his MBA studies?
    Or she could be imagining things. Katya hides a smile behind her wineglass as she steals a look at Van. He still looks ashen, like he fears he has a burning cross on his head. Irina stares past them all out to the harbor beyond.
    “Mom!” bellows Chip as he crashes through the door, nearly destroying a lamp on an end table where her father had been