It Happened One Night Read Online Free PDF

junk drawer, then dropped a yellowed and beat-up
     greeting card on the table when she sat. The front showed a picture of a watercolor lily; the background was striated purple
     and orange smears. Karin opened the cover.
    Dear Lana. Happy Birthday. From Cal.
    Karin frowned. With one finger, she slid the card as far away from her as the table edge allowed.
Calvert
. She and Lana hadn’t seen their father since Lana had graduated from high school. As soon as she could manage, Karin had
     packed up with her baby sister and returned to their home state of Vermont—away from their father’s Wisconsin boardinghouse.
     From that day to this, Karin had never looked back. And she’d assumed Calvert hadn’t either. Until now.
    “He’s a little late,” Karin said.
    Lana shrugged—a gesture Karin was intimately familiar with, Lana’s left shoulder always rising a touch higher than the right.
     “He must have forgotten the real date.”
    “Wouldn’t surprise me,” Karin said.
    Lana shrugged again.
    Karin searched her brain for an explanation, for the reason that Calvert would suddenly want to get in touch with them after
     so many years. “Maybe he’s dying.”
    “You think?”
    “If he was, would it matter?”
    “I don’t know. I guess not,” Lana said.
    Karin tapped a fingernail against the table. “It could just be that he wants money.”
    “Or maybe he was thinking of us.”
    “After he ruined our lives?”
    Lana shook her head. “He didn’t
ruin
our lives.”
    “He killed Mom!”
    “Not really.”
    “Son of a—
Lana
! How can you defend him?” Karin said, and only after the words had flown from her mouth did she realize that she’d stood
     up, was looming over her wan-faced sister, and was talking a few decibels too high.
    Long ago she used to have a temper.
Anger issues
, her high school teachers had said. Moving away from Calvert had helped her get her fury under control—that and an excellent
     therapist. Years had passed since she’d had the kind of flare-up that threatened to get the best of her now. She walked to
     the window, taking long, deep breaths. “Sorry. I’m sorry about that.”
    “It’s okay. But I
wasn’t
defending him,” Lana said.
    Karin nodded, but she wasn’t so sure. While Karin had a tendency to fly off the handle, Lana bottled things up inside. In
     middle school she’d once been brutally bullied by a handful of mean girls. They sneered at her secondhand clothes, “accidentally”
     spilled milk on her in the cafeteria, aimed for her during dodgeball, and more than once made her leave class in tears.
    After the girls finally moved on to torment someone else, Lana maintained that the girls were actually good, kind human beings
     deep down. Some people thought Lana said those kinds of things because she was angelic. But Karin knew better. Kindness was
     Lana’s way of re-arranging reality so it became more bearable. It was always sunny in Lana-land.
    Karin crossed the room, plucked the card from the table, and threw it in the garbage can.
    “You should have recycled,” Lana said.
    Karin ignored her. “Listen. I don’t want you to get upset about this. If for some reason we hear from him again, I’ll take
     care of it. For now let’s just focus on getting some food in you, okay?”
    Lana frowned into her bowl while Karin sat back down. “It’s not that.”
    “What’s wrong?”
    Lana stirred her soup but didn’t eat or speak. She’d always been reluctant about opening up to Karin. Karin suspected the
     root of her silence went back to their childhood, when Karin was more like a mother than a sister in Calvert’s house. They’d
     hadn’t quite figured out how to find equal footing yet. But that didn’t stop Karin from trying.
    “Is it Ron? Did you meet someone else?”
    She shook her head.
    “Did he?”
    Again Lana shook her head.
    “Then what’s wrong?”
    “I think I need to go lie down,” Lana said.
    Karin’s heart sank. She didn’t want to go