It Happened One Night Read Online Free PDF Page B

home. Her dark living room, the upstairs bedrooms that were meant for children but
     instead stood full of storage bins and unused exercise equipment—she couldn’t bear it.
    “Fine.” She pushed out her chair and stood.
    “Karin, wait. That’s not what I mean. You don’t have to leave.”
    “Look. I get it. It’s fine.”
    “Just… please. Calm down for a second. If you want to hang out here, that’s okay. I’m just really tired. I’ve never felt so
     tired. I should probably sleep.”
    Karin took a deep breath and counted to ten. She was angry. And as usual, Lana was the closest target in sight. She hadn’t
     meant to be so curt. When she spoke, her voice was back under control. “It’s okay. I’ll go. I mean, you
should
sleep.”
    “I don’t mind if you hang out.”
    “It’s okay.”
    “Well. Thank you for making dinner.”
    “Don’t thank me. Just finish it.”
    “I will.”
    “And if you start to feel feverish, give me a call.”
    “Okay. But I’m sure I’m fine.”
    Karin picked up her purse from the counter and looked around. There was nothing more to do. “Good night,” she said. Then she
     grabbed her jacket, went outside to her minivan, and drove out of the city, heading as slowly as she could toward home.
    Later, Lana woke from a nightmare for the second night in a row. She was lost in a fun house, crooked windows, slanty floors,
     and doors everywhere. So many doors. People rushed around her—men coming and going, their pupils dilated, their smiles as
     wide and floppy as clowns’ mouths. When she woke she was sweating and afraid and smothered by her bedroom walls. She had to
     get out.
    In her favorite pajamas—boxers and an old T-shirt of Eli’s worn to near translucence—she padded barefoot downstairs, opened
     the screen door, and sat on the warm concrete of the front stoop. She dropped her house phone beside her. The neighbors’ windows
     were dark. Cars were lined up front to back all along the curbs. The air smelled like asphalt and earth.
    She ran her fingers through her hair and covered her face with her hands. It had been years since the dream had come back
     to her, so many years that she’d thought whatever cells in her brain had once stored the information must have died off and
     taken the memories with them. But that wasn’t the case.
    Unlike Karin—who could remember every detail of their years with Calvert—Lana remembered things in stops and starts. She suspected
     the fragments were better left scattered to the four corners than brought together. The pieces, she could handle. The whole,
     she could not.
    She fingered a bit of chicory growing up around the front walk; its stalk was tough and strong, its short-lived petals cool
     against her skin. She tried to focus on the positive. She supposed if there was one thing to thank her father for, it was
     her love of flowers.
    Calvert had made money by opening up his creaky old Victorian to cash-only boarders, mostly men. Lana never knew who would
     be standing behind the door of any given room. The house seemed to breathe transients: truckers, construction workers, addicts,
     recovering addicts, and the endless parade of girlfriends—women who smoked, drank, and swore with the same ribald fervor as
     the men. Calvert had made it clear from the get-go that his daughters weren’t to ask too many questions. They were to lie
     low, to leave him and his tenants alone.
    He’d never given them anything beautiful or indulgent, never owned anything that was brand-new. But once she’d seen him pause
     at the edge of the yard in front of a bright orange bush to pick a flower. And when he’d passed her where she sat on the front
     step, he’d dropped the flower beside her and said, “Here.”
    It wasn’t poetry. But how Lana’s heart leaped to see the jewelweed in her palm, its petals folded like the most complicated
     and elegant origami. And what breathlessness, to discover that the spatterings of purple at the