Read As You Were for Free Online Page A

Wheat.
    She held the bagged paper by the open end with two fingers, avoiding the muck that slid down the plastic and slapped onto the concrete walk that led to the porch. No matter how often she had reprimanded that delivery boy, the kid always threw the paper in the yard. Drying out papers by the fireplace had become a habit for her and Brit—
    Tru shook off the memory and freed the paper from the bag, dropping it flat onto the fireplace ledge to dry. She could have spared her weary brain cells the task of figuring out what day it was, by merely waiting for the paper—another indication of her exhaustion, she guessed.
    She stared at the front page of the Denver Post, the headlines shouted foreign policy, inflammatory comments made by the some politician about his gay sister, and another report about The Highwayman. He had claimed his third victim. She whispered a silent prayer that Brittany was safe somewhere, and would not become the fourth on his list.
    The newspaper was a frightening place to search for news of a missing loved-one, unless it was in the want-ads. But when will I stop? Staring at the paper, splotchy with the moisture from the ground, she left it on the hearth and went to turn down the bed.
    Removing her jeans and Naropa University sweatshirt, she likened the hard void inside herself to the cliché, you don’t miss the water ‘til the well runs dry. She had no idea how deeply rooted in Brit her world had been, nor the value of that bond, until severed. Another dull pain thumped through her chest and she knew it as a pain impervious to any human-made panacea. Sleep would be the only offering of release—if only from the exhaustion. Finally, that idea alone was enough.
    Tru slid beneath the black sheet and matching geometric design of the comforter that used to warm her and Brittany on those cold Colorado nights, recalling the vividly unsettling images of that evening, weeks ago, with Travis in that hotel. Did she deserve, then, the emptiness that had taken over her life since it all crystallized into this current hell? Was she singularly at fault? Tru did not have the strength to will her eyes dry again. She sighed, letting go of the churnings in her mind, focusing only on the gentle purring of Dropsi, who had taken her usual place on the pillow above Tru’s head. She drifted into a deep sleep, feeling the slight vibration of the cat’s internal motor on her scalp, knowing that by morning the tears would be a memory soon refreshed.
    Brittany lay in her hospital bed, knowing she’d be released today, and wondering where the hell a person goes when she doesn’t know where she belongs. The Women’s Shelter would be the temporary solution. A solution, Nurse Sturgis told her, that was standard operating procedure for the hospital in cases like hers. She looked at the clock. Eight a.m. The sun tried to shine, but the bitter cold kept it from warming the window and permeating the room. Feeling a chill, she got up carefully and put on the robe and slippers. Nobody’s robe, nobody’s slippers —some articles of clothing that had been given to someone with only one name, by a nurse who took pity.
    She strayed to the window and examined the new day. The first day of a new life which would be full of searches for the old one. The first day of the rest of her past.
    The hospital staff had taken up a collection so that she would not be penniless when she walked out of here, along with the directions to the shelter, and a list of other organizations that might help her. She had refused psychological counseling because it made her feel somehow threatened; still not used to this disconnected universe her memory loss had caused, she certainly didn’t want some stranger with a psychiatric degree poking around in her head when she wasn’t sure what was in there, trapped beyond her grasp.
    A perky volunteer named Trina picked her up outside the hospital entrance, her hair thin and a dull blond, her birdlike arms