Lies of the Heart Read Online Free PDF Page B

her eyes to the table, to the sheet rising over Nick’s face. She saw his thick eyebrows, a patch of dark hair, before the sheet was pulled over him completely. Fought the urge to bang on the glass with the palm of her hand, to yell, Wait, wait—I didn’t see !
    She sensed Candice staring at her, refused to turn around. Katie had nothing to be ashamed of—she didn’t do anything wrong. Nick would have come back to her.
    — He was a brilliant man, Candice finally said to Katie’s back. Proud and accusatory at the same time.
    Katie listened to her mother-in-law’s footsteps clicking away (her ex-mother-in-law now?) and wished she could shout at the woman—just hurl those last revelations Nick had shared with her before he left, the kind of husband-wife secrets that would ravage Candice on lonely nights.
    And then she wished, despite herself, for that last tormenting image of Nick to crowd into her memories, to obliterate everything else that came before this moment. Instead of this, instead of finally turning around to watch his mother walk away, her head held high, strangely triumphant.

2
    Y es, Nick comes back to her in the nights now—in the shadowed recesses of their bedroom, in her dark, wandering dreams. And he is there in the day, too, when she prepares her solitary meals, when she makes the bed and smooths her hand over the comforter on his side, when she aimlessly flips through channels and catches herself stopping on the Discovery Channel, his favorite. Even when she stumbles into the bathroom in the morning, Nick is there and not there: the absence of the coffee ring he used to leave on the sink each morning before work, no matter how many times she asked him to clean it up. The surprise, the catch in her throat even now when she sees the gleaming porcelain.
    Always this fixed, shapeless weight—he is still gone, he is still with her.
    He is never far away, even when this heaviness lifts temporarily, and the moment is hers alone: in the shower, when she bends her head under the stream, the delicious feel of heat on her neck; in the car, an old song on the radio, the music recalling family vacations and her sister dancing into the ocean. Glorious, forgetting moments, like brief pockets of extra-oxygenated air—but then it is worse, because seconds after, there is the quick pulse of remembering, and Nick steals back into the frame completely. And another face, too, peering at Katie from the background. Jerry. Teasing his way into their story.
    Today, before court begins, the moment comes with the dark brown smell of coffee sputtering into the pot downstairs as she runs a brush through her hair; as she inhales deeply, Nick slips away, and Katie feels the visceral joy of anticipation, the deep-roasted heat on her tongue. And then, before she can stretch inside the moment, she is propelled back once again: Nick in their kitchen on Sunday mornings, the clink of their mugs as he takes them out of the cupboard, his soft, happy whistling drifting up the stairs to her. And Jerry, he is there, too, bundled under the covers in the spare bedroom upstairs, asking her to tell it again to start his day with them. It May, he’d always begin, and Katie would settle at the edge of the bed, her hand resting on the rise of Jerry’s arm underneath the blanket. Wanting to go to Nick instead, to accept the mug of coffee and the first lazy kiss of the day, but not before this—not before giving her story with Nick to Jerry all over again, like a gift.
    —We met on Patience Island, just after sunset, she’d always begin, but Jerry wouldn’t be fooled.
    —No, Kay-tee. It May. His voice dreamy, a child waiting for a favorite fairy tale from beginning to end. Knowing each word by rote, ready to point out inconsistencies.
    —It was May, she’d start again, and watch him grip the covers up to his chin, his eyes round with excitement.—The afternoon of Dana’s engagement party.
    —It too hot, Jerry would say, and she’d