Don't Go Read Online Free PDF Page B

never without a cup of coffee.
    I’m addicted, she would say.
    Mike thought of Bob and Danielle saying she’d been drunk on vodka, which was impossible. Chloe didn’t even drink vodka, much less to excess. He wondered if there would be police reports or a coroner’s report. He didn’t know the legalities, and it wasn’t as if she’d been murdered. There would have been an autopsy. The thought made him physically sick.
    He got out of the car and walked up the driveway to the house, where he climbed the few steps of the porch, then stopped short. Their welcome mat was covered with red roses in shiny foil, a poinsettia plant with a red-and-green ribbon, and a bouquet of red-and-white carnations, wrapped in transparent paper. A pile of sympathy cards sat wedged among the flowers, and there were handwritten cards from her former students. One read, WE MISS YOU, MS. VOULETTE.
    Mike felt hit in the chest, as if he’d been shot. The flowers showed him how much Chloe was loved, and also that she was lost. They proved that she had lived and she had died. It was almost more than he could bear. He gathered them up tenderly, unlocked the door, and went inside.

 
    Chapter Seven
    Mike set the flowers on the console table, flicked on the light and surveyed the entrance hall. The house was foreign and familiar, both at once. It was the same entrance hall, but something was missing.
    Chloe is missing.
    Mike set aside the thought, then it struck him. The area rug was gone, an Oriental that Chloe had bought in Lambertville, and the oak floor showed the faintest square of lighter wood. Then he realized why the rug wasn’t here. It must have been stained with blood. He worked his jaw, suppressing a wave of nausea. Chloe must have crawled from the kitchen to the entrance hall. She was trying to save herself. Because he wasn’t there to save her.
    He crouched on his haunches and ran his fingers along the hardwood, which was smooth and clean, with barely any grit or dirt. He placed his palm flat against one spot, the way he had on Emily’s heart. He wondered crazily if he would feel Chloe’s heart stop, the way he had felt Emily’s beat. He felt nothing but cold wood, inanimate. It used to be alive, but it wasn’t anymore.
    Oh, honey. I’m so very very sorry.
    He got down on his hands and knees, scrutinizing the grain of the hardwood, looking for some of her blood. The floorboards were of random width, and the aged oak was rich with browns, golds, and blackish gray. He ran his finger down one dark vein and realized how much it was like a human vein, narrowing to the tiniest of cracks, a wooden capillary. The floorboards were clean, which meant she hadn’t bled through the rug. She must have lost too much blood before she’d even got this far.
    Mike, she was drunk.
    Mike didn’t believe it, not a word. Bob and Danielle were mistaken. Maybe Chloe had a drink, or maybe a neighbor had stopped in, or Sara or her other teacher friends had come to see the baby. She might have gotten a bottle of vodka out for them. It was the holidays, after all. Mike felt driven to understand what had happened, to retrace the last moments of her life. Maybe if he knew the order of events, he could reverse everything, like hitting a button on a videotape. He would rewind it back to his deployment, then to his enlisting in the Reserves. He wanted to serve his country, but he didn’t want it to cost him his wife. He would have paid the price, but not Chloe. Not her.
    He found himself moving on his hands and knees toward the kitchen, the reverse of what Chloe had done in her final hours. He kept running his hands over the wood until he reached the threshold of the kitchen. He couldn’t see the floorboards anymore because the entrance-hall light was behind him. The only light in the kitchen was the colored Christmas lights shining through the windows, so he stood up and flicked on the kitchen light.
    Mike took a second to let himself absorb the sight. An