Read Together Alone for Free Online Page B

Doug nervous.”
    “Yet he won’t let you work?” Kay asked. “I don’t understand him.”
    “He knew this day was coming,” Celeste complained. “He should have had her tuition all stashed away.”
    “How could he do that?” Emily asked. “We’ve always used his income to live on.” She defended Doug out of habit, though she was annoyed herself. They lived frugally. His business had grown steadily. She didn’t understand why they were so strapped.
    But if the money wasn’t there, it wasn’t there. She sighed. “It’s only the room above the garage. It won’t be so bad.” With a sheepish smile and a one-shouldered shrug, she said, “It might actually be nice. Beat the silence. You know?”

three
    I T WAS A SILENCE FILLED WITH VOICES SHE couldn’t hear, an eerie quiet barely breeched by the smooth slur of the jazz sax wafting from the stereo in the den. She turned up the volume and listened, with the small of her back to the doorjamb and her arms crossed. Closing her eyes, she let the beat take her away.
    But not for long, never for long. This was where she needed to be.
    Peeling her spine from the wood, she began an aimless wandering from room to room. Earlier, she had talked with Jill, who was on her way to a dorm dinner and sounded excited, and with Doug, who was on his way to a client meeting and sounded rushed. She had heated the beef stew Myra delivered. She had watched the evening news. She had folded Jill’s freshly laundered sheets—there was a line to be drawn on the leave-her-room-alone rule—and put them back on the bed.
    After arranging the pillows neatly at its head, she had stood for a while holding Cat. Its fur was matted and its whiskers sparse, one eye gone, its tail shredded. She remembered reading The Velveteen Rabbit dozens of times, with Jill close by her side and Cat close by Jill’s. No doubt about it, Cat was as loved as that rabbit.
    Surprising, that she had left it home. Kids brought stuffed pets to college. Hadn’t Jill’s roommate—“she’s so cool, Mom”—brought two? Then again, if Jill wanted her room at home preserved, there was no better watchdog than Cat. So Emily had gently placed it on the pillows, making sure that its time-worn body was securely propped.
    She went down the hall now, past one closed door, the bathroom, and the bedroom she shared with Doug, to the stairs. The runner was worn. Emily remembered when it had been new. The thought made her feel old herself, absurd, given that she was barely forty. But she didn’t have children at home anymore, which meant that she was, in theory, semiretired, which was an awful thought. She had always been highly directed.
    Discouraged, she sank into the living room sofa. It, too, was worn, though not worth recovering. She and Doug didn’t entertain often. He wasn’t home enough.
    She sighed as her gaze settled on the mantel. She picked out photos from the crowd there, recalling when each had been taken, and the memories kept her company for a time. Then they faded, and she was alone.
    She thought of taking a bath. She had rarely had time for that, raising Jill. Or she could read a book. She had a stack on the dresser, four good ones to choose from.
    The windows were open to the late-August night, to the chirrup of the crickets and the slurp of the pond. Earlier, there had been the drone of a lawn mower, done now, though the scent of cut grass hung thick in the humid air.
    Sitting in the dark of night, so quiet and still, she felt as though her life had come to a screeching halt. In quick succession she had been daughter, student, wife, and mother.
    What was she now? A wife without a husband? A mother without a child?
    But Doug would be home at the end of the week. And she talked with Jill on the phone.
    Rising from the sofa, she rubbed her damp palms together and peered out the window. She tried to see if anyone was coming, but the night was too dense to see anything from here, so she straightened her T-shirt