While You Were Gone: A Thought I Knew You Novella by Kate Moretti Read Free Book Online Page B

do, Pete and me: a small, circular slow dance with the facade of gentility, all the while throwing well-hidden jabs punctuated by the periodic sharp, stinging uppercut. “Did you call Mom?”
    He nods, rubs his chin, and looks toward the door. “I left a message. She didn’t pick up.”
    “Sleeping off last night, I bet.” I harrumph out a strangled laugh.
    “Kare…” He lets his voice trail off, and I shoot him a glare. He sighs and holds his hands out plaintively. “Give her a break, okay?”
    “What about me?” I whine. I know it’s a whine, and I wince. I hold up my hand, palm out, to cut him off. I know Pete. A joke was coming, something maybe about a broken arm, whatever. It was my brother’s classic role: if a joke can be made, make it. If a responsibility can be ducked or pawned, duck it. But smile big so no one gets mad. Big dimples. I was the only one it didn’t work on.
    “Aw, Karen. Maybe this is your break. You’ve been….” He looks around the hospital room, wanly searching for the right words. “Not yourself. Angrier. Distracted. Something. Now you’re benched.”
    “In the championship,” I grumble, advancing the sports analogy because it’s Pete’s language.
    “Nah, are you kidding me? This is your rookie year.” He means it to be nice. Encouraging.
    I bang my good heel against the bed, and it smacks down on a metal rod pushing dangerously close to the mattress’s surface, and a sharp throb travels up from my ankle. Awesome. I’ve injured my good leg.
    “What happens to hockey players who get injured in their rookie year?” I challenge.
    “Er, not usually anything good.” Pete twists his mouth, realizing I’ve talked him into a trap. Not hard, generally speaking.
    I sigh and lean back against my pillows. “Exactly.”

    When Paula finally blows in, it’s with an air of authority she has no right to have. For almost two days, it was nothing but beeps and silence, and then, suddenly, she’s here every day with her too-tight-for-her-age jeans and too-strong-for-a-hospital perfume. She’s sitting next to my bed, holding my hand when the nurses come in to take my blood pressure or administer pain medication, tsking and patting my arm, clucking around the room, pretending to straighten up. She apologizes for being “late” as if we simply had a brunch date and makes an excuse about being out of town for a few days.
    “Out of town? In what car?” I ask her. “Where out of town?”
    I can’t tell if I’m pinning her down out of a true concern. After all, her car rambles along with more than two hundred thousand miles, and her cell phone is perpetually lost. I often think that Paula could just wander off the face of the earth, and who would know? Who, besides Pete and I, would care? I think, mostly, I’m trying to catch her in her lie, but she’s always slippery, and even if I did, I’m not sure she’d care. She’s been here for two days in a row, and it feels like a year.
    “How is the pain?” She changes the subject, her brows knitted in concern that could be real.
    “I’m fine, Mom. I’m going home tomorrow, anyway.” I’ve been here four days, and my concussion is better, and my ankle is healing. I hobble around on a walking cast to and from the bathroom. My arm has been set and air-casted, and I’m impatient with the nurses and doctors, confined to one room with a growing stack of gossip magazines that Paula brings me next to the bed. I’ve never read celebrity magazines in my life. I can’t imagine who cares about this stuff. But I’m bored, and the glossy pages beg to be flicked through.
    Abbie, the day nurse, watches us out of the corner of her eye, and I’d love to know what she makes of Paula. My mother’s blond hair is curled around her heavily made-up face as though she goes right from here to a club, which probably isn’t far from the truth. Her cleavage is lined with folds of loose skin, and she wears a slinky turquoise see-through top tucked