The Explanation for Everything by Lauren Grodstein Read Free Book Online Page A

that’s not good luck, I don’t know what is.” Then, to avoid their worried faces, Andy ducked his head into his underseasoned stew.
    T HE Y LIVED FOUR houses down from Sheila and Jeremy on twisty, underlit Stanwick Street, settled among the hunting clubs and fishing holes and cranberry bogs of Mount Deborah Township, centrally located in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. The house suited him: it was small and middle-aged, with a yard too crowded with evergreens for anybody to expect him to mow. His daughters shared a room in the back, and he occupied the drafty bedroom in the front, and to the side of the house, unexpected and graceful, was a diminutive oval swimming pool. He put a pair of rocking chairs on the porch, and every November he watched the crab apples splat on the front lawn.
    â€œGirls,” he said, as they cut across their next-door neighbor’s lawn, “watch out for the pool.” They were both of an age to roll their eyes at him, but, as far as he could tell, neither did. Rachel, three steps ahead of him, cut a graceful figure in the gloaming. Belle almost tripped on a felled branch but caught herself in time.
    Almost autumn but the house was stuffy. Andy opened windows, pulled the strings on the overhead fans. He was the second widower in a row to own this house; the previous one had died right there in the wood-paneled den, on the couch, in front of the Sunday morning news shows. The widower’s daughter had knocked the price almost in half to get the house off her hands, and now Andy’s own couch sat in the grooves on the carpet the old man had left.
    Belle fell asleep on Rachel’s bottom bunk; rather than take the top, Rachel squeezed in next to her and fell asleep smushed between her sister and the wall. At eleven o’clock, the Pine Barren frogs chorusing outside, Andy turned off their night-light and kissed them each on their smooth sweaty foreheads. They often slept curled together this way, and Andy wondered when they might stop, and what would stop them—puberty, he guessed. Which Rachel would be facing down any moment, if she wasn’t already.
    â€œDad?”
    â€œI’m here, honey.” But Rachel was only talking in her sleep. He stood at their doorway for another minute in case she said anything else, then backed away.
    Andy was scheduled for nine o’clock classes this semester, which he preferred: sleepy students were docile students, and he’d get off campus early enough, most days, to make it to Rachel’s soccer practices. Every year he thought about offering to help coach, but every year he remembered he didn’t know anything about soccer, and could well do more harm than good. So he stood on the sidelines and watched Rachel race up and down the fields, mud splattering her shin guards. She played halfback and she was good, and even though they both knew he didn’t have to watch her practice, she never told him to stay away.
    What had his mother told him after Louisa died? Just an hour at a time. Just get through one hour, and then the next, and before you know it, it’s a whole new day.
    He sat down on the couch, fiddled with one of the cigars he kept in the box next to the DVD player. He was limiting himself to two a week, but he’d deliberately forgotten when he started counting new weeks. Did a week start on Sunday? Monday? Had he already smoked two in the past seven days?
    Screw it. A rustle of leaves outside the open window as a predator swished through the night to pick off a vole or a kitten. He stood up with his cigar, his cutter, and the Zippo that Lou bought him a decade ago in Miami. He would smoke and keep an eye out for cats.
    â€œKnock knock?”
    Sheila was standing in his doorway. She had changed her shirt, was wearing a thin cotton T-shirt cut low.
    â€œI was just going outside,” he said. “You want to smoke?”
    They were tentative with each other but for this one aberrant