Sing It to Her Bones by Marcia Talley Read Free Book Online Page A

face said, Don’t go there , so I changed the subject.
    “I wanted to ask Dennis more about ‘that Lambert boy,’ but you kept shooting daggers at me. What’s the big secret, Connie?”
    Connie looked baffled. “No secret. I just sensed that Dennis thought he had spoken out of turn, and I didn’t want to put him on the spot.” She joined me at the table, where I was refolding the napkins—Connie always used big, checkered cloth ones—so we could use them again in the morning.
    “I don’t remember much about the Lamberts. Dadwas pretty sick, and I didn’t pay much attention to the news. I’d be so exhausted by the end of the day I’d just fall into bed. The Lamberts still live down on Princess Anne Street, though, right behind the nursing home. Their son, Chip, was a big athlete back in the late eighties. He went to the University of Maryland on a basketball scholarship, I think. He got married and moved to Baltimore, last I heard. He and Katie were high school sweethearts, so naturally he’d be asked about her disappearance.”
    “I would certainly hope so!”
    “Let it rest, Hannah! I can’t believe you’re still standing up asking silly questions after the day you’ve had. It makes me tired just to look at you. Do you want dinner?”
    We agreed to let tea substitute for dinner; then I tried calling Paul. When I got the answering machine again, I left him a grumpy message, then collapsed in the living room to watch the seven o’clock news. After Tom Brokaw bade us good night, I let Connie have dibs on the tub because I was too weary to get up. I lay in front of the TV, like a lump, my feet propped up on the arm of the sofa and in sole, proud possession of the remote control. I used it to graze through the channels. Earlier Connie had poured us each a glass of heart medicine: red wine. The stem of my glass rested on my stomach so that the ruby liquid sloshed from side to side as I breathed.
    Connie wasn’t much for modern gadgets; she had owned an answering machine once, but could neverfigure out how to program it. While she soaked in the tub, I lay on the sofa and grumbled to myself about Connie’s aversion to electronic devices. If she had had an answering machine, I complained, there might have been a message on it from Paul when we returned from the Nichols place. At eight-thirty I switched from a mindless network sitcom to a biography of Shirley Temple on A&E. Surely he’d be calling me soon. I drained my wineglass and settled in for the wait. The last thing I remember was Shirley and her bouncing sausage curls dancing up the steps with Stepin Fetchit.
    How I got myself into bed is a mystery. I awoke to the sound of gravel crunching. Socks were still on my feet, and my mouth tasted like old navy soup spoons. I drew aside the lightweight chintz curtains and peered out the window. My green Toyota was rolling down the drive with Connie at the wheel. I had blocked her in. Downstairs a note stuck to the door of the refrigerator with a plastic magnet from Pizza John’s informed me that she’d gone to get a newspaper and that she’d be “back in a few.”
    I took the opportunity to bathe. With the tub half full and steam already clouding the mirror, I settled into the water, first resting my back against the cool porcelain, then sliding down until I was lying almost flat. I adjusted the hot-water tap to a trickle and watched as the water level slowly rose to cover my thighs and arms, my feet, my chest, and finally, my breast. The right one had once been small, round, and perky like the left one until cancer and a surgeon’s knife had reduced it to arough, red rope across my chest. I ran a finger gently along the knotted scar and thought about the reconstructive surgery I was considering.
    I sat up, soaked a washcloth in the hot water from the tap, wrung it out, and placed it over my face, covering it completely, breathing in the hot, moist air, breathing slowly, evenly, feeling my body melt into the