Is This Tomorrow: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

air. “What’s that?” Dot said alarmed.
    “I have to go,” Ava said.
    There were neighbors outside, in a group, studying Jake as he parked. Ava felt their eyes on her as she walked toward him in her heels, sinking a bit in the soft grass. She heard someone say, “That’s what she’s wearing?” The comment felt aimed at her like a barbed arrow, and she self-consciously smoothed down the front of her dress. Jake was in a suit, and he held a small wrapped package. He smiled when he saw her, and when she told him about Lewis, he shrugged
    “Kids,” he said. “I’d be pissed off, too, if I thought someone was courting my mama.”
    Courting. He said courting.
    He bent and kissed her. “We have time.” He held up the package. “You told me he liked magic, so I bought him a kit.” He unpeeled some of the tape on the wrapping, opening one side carefully to show her, and she felt a pulse of warmth. It was such a sweet gesture. Then she studied the glossy cover of the kit and her heart sank a little when she saw the silly-looking rabbit popping out of a hat, the cartoony magician holding the animal by the ears. She could tell that it was a kit for a younger kid, and even worse, right there in shiny red letters on the bottom it said “for ages 4 – 6 .” Lewis would be insulted. He read adult-level books. He’d no more want this kit than he would want a pacifier, but she could only hope that Lewis would be polite.
    Ava and Jake sat in her living room and had a glass of the burgundy, but she couldn’t relax, not without Lewis being there. She kept checking her watch, and every time she saw the time, she felt a little sicker. After half a glass of wine, she felt faintly buzzed, as if there were a scrim over the room. They played a game of gin, but in the back of her mind, she thought of what she was going to do and say when Lewis sauntered in. She’d wait to see if he apologized, and if he did, the evening still might be salvaged, but if he didn’t, she might explode. She was going to ground Lewis. She was going to set down new and clear rules around the house that he had to obey. She was furious with him for being so inconsiderate. Kids. They ran away, they did stupid things, they came home tired and dirty and full of excuses and you didn’t know whether to yell at them or hold them close.
    By ten, she was frantic. He had never stayed out this late before, even when he was with Jimmy and Rose. She looked out the window and saw how dark it was.
    “We need to go look for him,” she told Jake, and he nodded and stood up, just as the phone rang, startling her.
    “I called the police,” Dot’s voice was strained. “They’re coming over.”
    The cops arrived within ten minutes, pulling up to Dot, who was standing in the street, her face pale of her usual makeup, her I Love Lucy curls limply held back by her kerchief. Ava and Jake came out to join her, but Dot looked at them as if they were strangers, instead grabbing for the first cop who got out of the car, an older beefy guy who absently patted her hand. The second cop sauntered out, young and thin, and then the other neighbors came out of their houses to find out what was going on. Ava, tight with fear, didn’t care that the neighbors were watching her, that they were drinking Jake in. Lewis. Where was Lewis?
    “Where could they be?” Dot cried.
    Ava thought of the map that had been in her son’s room for a week before it went back to Jimmy’s, all those pushpins tacked to the places that he and Jimmy were going to visit when they were older, a cross-country trip they thought would be an adventure. She dropped Jake’s hand. “They were planning this trip—” she said. “There’s a map.”
    “The map’s for fun, it doesn’t mean anything!” Dot said. “And they’re happy kids, why would they run away?”
    “You don’t know that they were running away,” Ava said, her voice sharpening. She tried to imagine Lewis on the road and felt sickened.