The Air We Breathe by Christa Parrish Read Free Book Online Page A

hollow perfectly, resting there as he traced her collarbone between his first two fingers.
    She missed him.
    No, maybe not him, though she’d loved him completely once. She missed more the feelings that came with being married—the security, the acceptance by those around her. Her married friends didn’t know what to do with her now—she wasn’t invited to the barbecues or game nights anymore. Oh, they tried, asking her to a couple of parties right after Daniel left, but it was awkward, tense, no one knowing what to say or how to say it. There was no place for a husbandless wife—or a childless mother—in the world Claire had once lived in, that of manicured lawns and church breakfasts and family vacations in Florida.
    The waitress came. Heidi looked at her watch again. Claire ordered a grilled chicken salad, no onions, her friend a BLT with coleslaw on the side.
    “Meghan is coming in a couple of weeks. With Landon,” Heidi told her.
    “You must be thrilled.”
    “I am. They’re staying a week. I wish it were longer. I wish she’d just stay put here.” Heidi stirred Sweet’N Low into her tea. “She’s pregnant again.”
    Claire paused, unable to read her friend. “And?”
    “It’s not Travis’s baby.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “That girl . . . I don’t know where we went wrong.”
    Unlike Heidi’s younger daughter, Meghan had wandered through Canaan, was still wandering. She hit her adolescent years as her father was diagnosed with colorectal cancer, lived through his long battle with multiple relapses and rounds of chemo and an eventual colostomy bag, which tied him—and Heidi, for the most part—to the house; he was too embarrassed by the smell to go out in public.
    Greg was also ashamed of the pain, how it drove him to the floor, sobbing. He’d lie in front of their bedroom door so Heidi couldn’t come in and see him like that, his pajama bottoms soaked in urine, his faith twisted in a mist of agonyand morphine. Heidi would sit outside the door, wet with her own tears, listening to her beloved cursing God with one breath, begging Him for relief with the next.
    Meghan saw it all, too. Her sister, Jennifer, had been young enough that she floated around in her seven-year-old fog of Barbie dolls and Brownie bake sales, and hadn’t quite understood all that went on. It was Meghan, though, who missed having her parents’ attention—the guidance and instruction desperately needed by teenagers—and like the proverbial prodigal, she looked for it elsewhere. Her life had been layered with different men and jobs and ideas of what would bring happiness. None of it lasted very long, though Heidi had hoped Meghan and Travis would at least marry and settle down.
    A man across the sedate downtown street waved; Claire looked behind her, but no one else occupied the tables outside the café. Heidi raised her hand and waved back, and the man crossed toward them.
    “I hope you know him,” Claire said with a little laugh.
    “I do,” Heidi said.
    “Is there something you’re not telling me?”
    “Well . . .”
    “Heidi! You’re seeing someone and you never said anything?”
    “Not exactly,” Heidi said, breaking eye contact, and she stood to give the man a quick hug. “Andrew, hi.”
    “I’m late, I know,” he said. “My eleven thirty ran over.”
    “Oh, that’s not a problem,” Heidi said. She didn’t look at Claire. “Sit, sit. Are you hungry? Let me get the waitress.”
    Andrew held out his hand. “You must be Claire. Heidi has told me so much about you.” He winced. “Sorry. That sounds . . .”
    “Lame?” Claire said.
    “Yes, absolutely. Lame it is.”
    He sat, and Claire determined not to look at him, or at Heidi. She fought with her croutons, stabbing them with her fork until they broke and then trying to scoop the crumbs up without using her fingers.
    How could she do this to me?
    Heidi forced conversation with Andrew, questioned him about his work (he was an architect at