Read Picture Me Gone for Free Online

musical merry-go-round ponies in bright colors. The breakfast cereal section goes on for half a mile and I wonder how anyone ever chooses. I’m looking for Easter eggs but the ones I find are all too ugly or too childish or too similar to the ones I could buy at home. When at last I catch up with Suzanne she’s talking on the phone. Her face looks different from the one Gil and I have seen. It’s younger, suddenly, and her smile is one she has not shown us.
    I approach her through the fruit section, where watermelons, apples and bananas all look twice the size of the ones in England. How can this be?
    When she sees me she says, I have to go, and clicks off. Her smile has gone all pink and sugary like the clown head on the cake. A friend from book club, she explains, unnecessarily.
    A friend? I don’t hate Suzanne but I can’t bring myself to like her either. She’s one of those people who thinks that because I’m young I’m blind to what’s true and what’s not. I see her far more clearly than she sees me, perhaps more clearly than she sees herself.
    Suzanne has to go to the dry cleaner and the post office, so we pile the groceries into the back of the car and she says, If you’d like to walk around a bit on your own, feel free. Just meet us here in half an hour.
    I wander off to a sports shop and browse the T-shirts, but there’s nothing I want to buy and anyway I don’t have any dollars. Across the road there’s a bench catching the last bit of sun and I sit down.
    Hey Cat , I text. Wish u wuz here.
    I wait for a while but Catlin doesn’t answer. In the meantime, everyone’s running around like crazy, and it’s funny to think that rush hour exists in a town the size of a peanut as well as at home. I sit as still as humanly possible, making myself invisible so I can watch what’s going on without being seen. It works. No one looks.
    The only thing worth watching is a man who backs his 4x4 much too fast into a parking spot and smashes the car behind him by mistake. He shouts at his kid, who’s maybe sixteen, for distracting him, and the kid gets out of the car, slams the door and storms off while the guy gets down on his knees to examine the dent in the other car.
    Catlin texts back. Me too. It rains. Attached is what I think might be a photo of a puddle. It’s hard to tell.
    I tear myself away from the local five-star entertainment to meet Suzanne at the car. Gabriel stares at me intently and when I smile at him his entire face lights up.
    We drive back to the house without saying much. Suzanne talks to Gabriel, who’s grizzling in the backseat. Who’s Mommy’s tired boy, she says, and then glances over at me like we’re in a conspiracy. Being with her makes me tired. Then I remember Owen and feel ashamed.
    Dinner is risotto with peas and Parmesan cheese. It tastes nice but halfway through the meal I excuse myself to lie on the sofa. Honey is beside me on the floor. I close my eyes and rest one hand on her back, feeling the rise and fall of her slow breathing. Gil covers me with a blanket. He thinks I’m asleep.
    So, he says in a low voice, sitting back down at the table. What are we going to do?
    Suzanne doesn’t answer right away. Eventually she says, I can’t leave. Surely you can see that. I can’t leave Gabriel and my students and . . . everything.
    I hear Gil sigh. Suzanne, tell me please. There must be more.
    There is a silence. I can almost hear the fizzing of Suzanne’s nerves.
    Tell me, he says.
    She begins to speak, quietly, so I have to strain to hear. I don’t know, she says. He says he’s fine but he’s not. He blames himself for Owen. Her laugh is bitter. I blame him too. I hoped Gabriel might make it better, but surprise, surprise, it’s worse. So it’s true what everyone says about save-the-marriage babies. Who’d have guessed?
    Gil says my name. He was not born yesterday. I make a noise like a sleeping person, a kind of grumbly sigh. It works. I was not born yesterday