Cover of Snow Read Online Free PDF Page B

reading.”
    â€œThe date … “
    â€œRight,” said Teggie, her voice an ache, hardly confirmation at all.
    â€œâ€¦Â was January sixteenth.” I tried to swallow past a sudden blooming in my throat. “January sixteenth?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œNo,” I said stupidly.
    Even Teggie had stopped speaking for the moment.
    â€œIf he got these on January sixteenth,” I said, letting the words come slowly so they didn’t choke me all at once. “Then it means that Brendan planned this—that he knew what he was going to do—a week before he did it.”

Chapter Seven
    By six the next morning, I was no longer able to keep my eyes shut. My mind and guts were one roiling mass.
    For five terrible days now, a belief had gripped me, unquestioned. That belief was in jeopardy, and I had to restore it. Period.
    Except the questions were coming at me, like a river overflowing its banks, unstoppable.
    To do what he did, my husband must have been clamped by a spasm of unanticipated pain. Whatever caused him to be in such agony, I was sure that it had caught him completely and totally unaware.
    Otherwise I would have known. Brendan would’ve shared with me, or if not that—for even I had understood that there were things my husband didn’t say, dark reaches of himself he kept concealed beneath the surface fun and humor—then I would’ve intuited it. Something huge and catastrophic enough to end Brendan’s life could not have gone unnoticed, unremarked.
    If my husband had been wounded on January sixteenth, severely enough to hang himself on the twenty-third, I would have heard something about it. Seen it.
Smelled
it on him.
    Except I hadn’t.
    Not if he’d decided on his course of action, gone so far as to procure some drug to grant him isolation, a full week before.
    Was Teggie right? Did I turn away from the hard things, or had there simply been no real hard things in our life? We’d had enough money—Jean was generous about the rent, and the cost of living wasn’t high up here—to enjoy an occasional vacation, plus the everyday recreation and sport of the region. Even in this small house, there sometimes seemed too much space, but I’d held out hope that might change one day. It was easy not to think about, because time spent just the two of us went down so easily, filled with laughter and distracting details from our days. Details that now threatened to seem catastrophically superficial, compared to whatever had been really going on.
    I sat up in bed, pushing the covers down from my waist. I was cold every time I slept now, no longer able to bear a blanket being drawn all the way up to my neck. Even shirt collars brought back intolerable visions of rope drawn tight around someone else’s throat, but I was paying for this new phobia, my upper body stiff as I walked to the bathroom. In the shower, though, I didn’t allow myself the luxury of a soak.
    Because if Brendan got that prescription on January sixteenth, that meant we went about our light, normal daily lives for seven whole days beforehand.
    Lived together. Slept together. Ate together. Showered together, at least once. Talked, made love, shared drinks. All while he was preparing to drug me and leave me alone forever? Planning to kill himself? It was impossible.
    But the date on the prescription said otherwise.
    I grabbed a sliver of soap, swiping opaque streaks across my goose-bumped skin.
    Unless Brendan got the medication for another purpose, then used it in my drink on the spur of the moment.
    That could be it,
I went on, piecing together hopeful thoughts.
    Amazing, the things you began to hope for.
    Brendan could’ve had the prescription here in the house, filled on the sixteenth for some minor ailment I was guilty of overlooking, then been struck down on January twenty-third by an unbearable shock, some piece of news I had yet to uncover.
    I kept