Soul Catcher by Katia Lief Read Free Book Online Page A

three plates,’ Mom said, as I was about to lay out four. ‘Dad’s staying late at the office.’
    ‘But it’s Saturday night.’
    ‘He has a case coming up. He’ll grab a sandwich in town.’
    Gwen shot me an I told you so look.
    That was too much. ‘Mom,’ I said, ‘where is he?’
    She ignored me. ‘How would you like to go to the movies tonight, all of us?’
    All three of us, she meant. No Dad.
    So, after dinner, we got into the silver Volvo and went to town. The movie was about funnyman Lenny Bruce, how he got famous telling dirty jokes that were nasty but true, and fell in love, and wrecked it all with drugs. In the end, of course, he died. It was a good movie but I hated it. A moralistic story about living wrong and ruining your life was the last thing I was in the mood for, considering the state of my life. Mom and Dad with a million miles between them. Patrick God-knew-where doing God-knew-what. Poor Patrick. If only I knew where he was, I’d go and save him, I wouldn’t just run away like Lenny’s wife, sitting in a cheap hotel in a puddle of tears.
    I couldn’t wait to get home to try calling him again.
    It was just past eleven when we drove up to the house. We always left one downstairs lamp and the upstairs hall light on when we went out. Now, the windows of Mom and Dad’sbedroom were bright yellow and you could see the flickering blue t.v. shadows inside.
    Dad was home.
    Mom slammed the brakes and we lurched forward. Without saying a word to us, she marched inside the house.
    We slipped in quietly after her. Gwen turned on the tube in the living room and pretended to watch an old Claudette Colbert movie, but I don’t think she was really paying attention. She was upset by what was happening. So was I.
    I never knew I could feel so lonely in my own house. I dialed Patrick again, wishing wishing wishing... but he wasn’t home.
    Very late, after I’d been in bed awhile but still couldn’t sleep, Dad crept into my room. Gwen was on the floor in a sleeping bag, snoring away. Dad stepped over her, and stood by the bed, looking at me. I pretended to be asleep. He bent down and kissed my forehead. It was not a normal goodnight kiss, but a goodbye kiss: long and heavy and sad. He left the room like a shadow, vanished.
    There was no way I could sleep now. My room was full of an electric charge, a white sizzle of questions. Where was Dad going? Why didn ‘t he talk to me about it? Was Mom leaving, too?
    I couldn’t stay in bed, so I put on my yellow robe and moccasin slippers, and went to their room to see if they were there. I thought maybe it had been a bad dream, maybe they were snuggled up in bed together. They didn’t even have to be snuggled, they just had to be there.
    But they weren’t; the bed hadn’t even been turned down. Their old green and blue bedspread was a little rumpled, that was all. Lights were on. It was too quiet. Until, outside, a motor revved. I looked out the window and saw Dad’s blue Audi roll away.
    ‘Mom? Mom? ’ I called.
    There was no answer, no sound. So I went looking.
    The attic door was open. The old wooden stairs glowed from the light of a weak overhead bulb. I’d always hated thesour smell of the attic, and now it seemed suffocating. But I went up anyway; I had to see who was there.
    Mom was bent over a trunk. It looked like she was searching for something inside. I felt a surge of hatred for this woman I’d always loved, and my thought was: she has driven him away.
    ‘What happened?’ I said.
    She didn’t turn around. I could see by the way her back moved that she was breathing in spasms.
    ‘What are you doing?’
    Where she knelt over the trunk, there was no light, only shadows swimming with suspended dust. I watched her, and my anger cooled. It was as if she emitted some kind of force that changed my anger into shame. The soft curve of her back, the wave of her hair as it fell into the trunk, struck me as the saddest thing I had ever seen. I didn’t