Within These Walls by Ania Ahlborn Read Free Book Online Page B

her and kiss her as hard as he could, he wanted to beg her not to sleep with that pedantic prick.
    Please, Carrie, don’t leave me. Don’t leave us. Don’t give up.
    But before he could make his move, the muffled thud of bass slithered from inside the U-Haul’s cab. Both he and Caroline turned their heads to watch their daughter’s blond hair fly. She was dancing in her seat to a song that had come on the radio—music therapy. When Jeanie was sad, the music was loud. Lucas had a feeling it would only get louder in the coming weeks.
    Watching Jeanie through the window, Caroline’s features went somber. Lucas took the opportunity to pull her into an embrace, pressed his lips to her temple, and whispered, “I love you,” against her skin. She relaxed for a modicum of a second, then pulled away from him with a backward step. After all, Kurt was watching. She’d have to talk him down if she expressed too much emotion.
    I have to put on a good show for Virginia. You know how it is . . . keep the kid happy, keep everything normal.
    “I’ll miss you,” Lucas told her, his throat suddenly dry, his fingers reaching for her hand as if to pull her back, to keep her from going.
    Will you miss me, too ?
    “Keep her safe,” Caroline said, then turned away, focusing on her bag.
    “Carrie.” He was desperate to hear it, he needed to know.
    Just tell me you still care, even if it’s just a little bit. Tell me there’s still a chance.
    Like an exotic animal displayed behind airport glass, Kurt shifted his weight from one shiny loafer to the other. His sport jacket hung off his well-built frame with a mannequin’s casual elegance. He looked too clean, too well-groomed, the type of guy who had a spa day every two weeks. Facials. Manicures. Waxes. Shiatsu massages penciled in as meetings. Martinis at two in the afternoon and ­sixty-dollar entrées written off as a business expense.
    Don Draper, he thought. That’s why she likes him. He’s Don fucking Draper in the flesh. A cartoon character. He isn’t real. Or maybe Kurtwas less Mad Men and more American Psycho . Perhaps, the moment Lucas turned his back, Kurt would filet his wife just like the guys he wrote about; men who had killed countless wayward girls. Poetic justice?
    All at once, Lucas grabbed Caroline by the arm, startling her with the sudden contact. “I love you,” he repeated, just in case she hadn’t heard him the first time.
    “I know.” She frowned, averted her eyes. “Me too.”
    He let his hand fall to his side in defeat.
    Caroline walked away, her rolling suitcase hissing along the concrete.

5
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    V EE WASN’T STUPID. She knew her mother was having an affair. Whoever that Kurt guy was, her parents had refused to talk out their problems. It’s what they had taught her to do— use words, not fists— but they were both hypocrites. And now Vee was on her way to some weird town in a state on the opposite side of the planet. Her summer was completely ruined. Her entire life was a total, hopeless, unrecoverable void of a train wreck. She’d never forgive her parents for this. Never get over it. Never.
    She had smelled the creep on her mother’s clothes—unfamiliar cologne clinging to her like a residual ghost. She saw “the other man” in the slump of her father’s shoulders, in the way her dad watched her mom from a distance. His sadness brimmed over so full it was a wonder it hadn’t drowned him completely.
    Her parents thought she was weird because they were too busy screaming at each other to pay attention to her. It was her mom, mostly. Vee had heard her blame her dad for Vee “going goth” like it was a genetically transmitted disease. But had they stopped to ask the real reason for her metamorphosis, they would have discovered that all this commotion was not about them but about a boy named Tim.
    Her friend Heidi had gotten Vee into melancholy music after hearing her brother Tim play it on his computer. Then Tim showed them the