Memory's Door (A Well Spring Novel) Read Online Free PDF Page A

olives at your sister’s Thanksgiving dinners?”
    “It was always the highlight of the day for me.”
    “Not for her.”
    “Remember how she scolded us every single time?” Marcus laughed and pretended he held a sign. “And the signs! Do you remember them?”
    “The ‘Are You My Mother’ signs? The ones we brought out when my sister started in on us the next year for the entire gathering to see? The signs that made her barely speak to me for a year?” Kat glared at him. “Those I will never forget.”
    “Hey, you made them.”
    “Who gave me the suggestion?”
    “I can’t remember.”
    Kat held up an OB and studied it as if it were a diamond and she was looking for flaws. “You really like them?”
    To prove his palate had been conquered, he reached over the counter, held his palm up, and wiggled his fingers. Kat placed the OB in his hand and folded her arms, and for an instant the look he’d come to dread appeared on her face. It was only there for a nanosecond, but it was there. The look that said another kind of anniversary was approaching that would rip her heart out once again. And his more than she knew. More than she would ever know because he could never tell her the truth.
    Marcus spoke in a whisper. “Do you want to talk about it?”
    “About what?”
    “You know.” Marcus swallowed. “Layne.”
    She shook her head. “I just want to get through this week.”
    Relief and disgust flooded Marcus. Relief that he had asked the question like a dutiful husband should and disgust that he lacked the strength to tell her all the details of what had happened that day.
    Every year on the anniversary of their son’s death he asked Kat if she wanted to talk about it, and every year she said no. In the first months after the accident they talked about it incessantly. Late into every night. Began again early every morning. But as the serrated sting of losing their son turned into numbness and Kat’s and his tears came less often, Kat’s need or desire to talk about it faded as well. So often the death of a child ripped the parents apart. It hadn’t happened to them. But it would if she knew what he’d done.
    He buried the thought as he’d become so skilled at doing over the years. The regret so deep that no matter how far down the other Warriors or anyone else went into his soul, it would never be uncovered.
    “Do you?” Kat sighed. “Want to talk about it?”
    Marcus shook his head and stood in the sweltering silence not knowing what to say, not trusting himself to speak even if he did know what words to offer.
    “I’ll be okay.” She brushed her hands on her tan slacks as if to flick the raw emotions they both carried onto the hard floor. “So will you. We’ll get through it like we do every year.”
    Marcus stared at her slacks.
    “Why are you staring at my pants?”
    “Are you behind on the laundry? Or did you run out of clothes?”
    “Why do you say that?”
    “You’re wearing the same shirt and pants as yesterday. In all our years together, I’ve never known you to wear the same outfit two days in a row.”
    She cocked her head and gave him a quizzical look. “I didn’t wear this yesterday. I stepped out of my norm and wore a dress.” Kat stepped closer to Marcus and tapped him on the head. “All the neurons firing in order today? You even predicted my tips would be bigger, which turned out to be true.”
    “That was two days ago.” He popped the last piece of the OB into his mouth and savored its sugary coating.
    “No, it was yesterday.”
    “Two days ago.”
    Kat narrowed her eyes. “Marcus, we had a long talk about choice, that our ability to choose was what separates us from the animals and how we alter our reality in every moment with every choice we make. Remember? You turned choosing a dress over pants into a quantum mechanics lesson.”
    “No, I didn’t.”
    “Yes. You did.” Kat gave him her dead-serious look.
    His body felt like it went from 98.6 degrees to 104