This Is How It Ends by Kathleen MacMahon Read Free Book Online

ball an almighty whack, right out into the sky. Lola went tearing after it, her tail whirling round and round like a helicopter blade.
    “Whoa, that’s quite a throw,” he said cheerfully.
    Addie pretended not to have heard him. She took her iPod out of her pocket and stood there at the bottom of the steps while she untangled the wires. Plugged herself in, wrapped her scarf twice around her neck, and tucked the ends into the front of her coat, sealing out all the cold air. She selected a track and scrolled the volume up as high as it would go. Then she turned her face to the sea, closed her eyes, and headed straight for the horizon.
     
    THEY MADE A NICE sight out there on the beach, the girl and the little dog. He felt happy just watching them.
    It was a stunning day. The sky was clear as far as you could see, the water a shimmering blue. The frost on the beach was like shards of mirrored glass. Bruno could feel the heat of the sun on his face. He was almost too hot in his coat but he didn’t want to take it off. It was a treat at this time of year.
    The girl was so far out there now that she was just a matchstick person, a black overcoat and two black sticks for her arms and her legs.
    Bruno watched her as she raised her arm up in a backwards sweep over her head and whacked that ball-thrower thing she had with her, sending the tennis ball flying in a perfect arc, much farther than you would think it would go. Every time she threw the ball the dog would go crashing through the shallows to fetch it back. She must have thrown that ball a hundred times, but Bruno wasn’t counting.
    Behind her, streaks of deep fleshy pink cut swaths through the sky. The girl was just a shadow puppet against that blazing backdrop.
    She was standing at the waterline now, still as a statue. She stood there for a long time. Bruno couldn’t help but wonder why she was standing there.
    He found himself longing for her to turn round.
     
    IT WAS COLD down on the beach, a vicious wind sweeping the length of it. Addie’s cheeks were smarting and her nose was numb. Her body was still warm, though, the inside of her scarf a little clammy where she’d been breathing into it.
    Tom Waits, she was listening to:
      
    And those were the days of roses,
    Poetry and prose. And Martha
    All I had was you and all you had was me.
      
    She was ready to go in now but she couldn’t. She was waiting for him to leave. She figured he couldn’t stay there all day.
    Every so often she would turn to scan the promenade, expecting to find his bench empty. But he was still there. It was as if he was waiting for her.
    Fuck it, she thought, I’ll freeze if I stay out here much longer.
     
    HE SAT AND WATCHED her as she walked back.
    She was hopping from side to side. He guessed, wrongly as it happens, that she was avoiding the puddles.
    At first he thought she was talking to herself. She had her head down and she was talking away as she walked. He wondered, was she talking to the dog? But the dog was nowhere near. The dog was racing round her in these huge loops, circling her wide. That’s when it occurred to him. She wasn’t talking, she was singing.
    It came to him in little wisps, buffeted by the wind, as if you were turning the dial on a radio, trying to find the station. When he did get a clear signal, he didn’t recognize what it was that she was singing, she was so far out of key.
    You had to disconnect yourself from the tune, you had to concentrate on the words instead. When he did figure it out, he couldn’t help but smile. He found himself singing along:
      
    “And a little rain never hurt no one.”
      
    With every step now, he could see her more clearly. She was wearing a heavy black overcoat, a huge brightly colored scarf wrapped several times around her shoulders. She had a hat on now. A dark blue beret, he was sure she hadn’t been wearing it before. There were licks of honey-colored hair sticking out from behind her ears.
    She had a