Mind of Winter Read Online Free PDF Page B

deaf they’d never be able to hear her through Eric’s cell phone even if he had the speaker turned on.
    “Maybe,” Eric said. “Some confusion. Didn’t expect it.”
    Didn’t expect it. Holly inhaled and exhaled with her mouth away from the phone receiver so he wouldn’t hear. If it hadn’t been so predictable, and so fucking tragic, she would have snorted at him. She would have laughed. She would have said, “You didn’t expect it. Well, what the hell did you expect?” How long was it going to take Eric to realize how elderly and infirm his parents had become?
    Instead, Holly said, “Oh dear. Okay. We’ll just do our best. Just get them home, Eric.”
    She punched the end button on her telephone. As usual, the line would not be cut off at first, and Holly had to punch END again and again until the connection was severed. When she put the phone down and turned around, Tatiana was standing on the other side of the kitchen island, smoothing her black hair with one of her elegant hands—long-fingered, nails painted red (to match her dress?). She asked, grimly, “What’s wrong, Mom?”
    Holly shrugged. “I don’t know, Tatty. Daddy’s got his parents in the car, and he just said, ‘Confusion.’ They’re getting older, sweetheart. It’s hard for them to travel. But they’ll be here soon, and we can take care of them. I better take a shower.”
    Holly smiled at Tatty, who did not return her smile. Christ. Was Tatty, like Eric, going to take offense now at any suggestion Holly made that Gin and Gramps were old ? How long was this denial going to last? Was Holly the only one who could see what was going on here—that this elderly couple should not be traveling alone, should not be living on their own? Was she the only one who’d noticed how quickly and completely things had been going downhill for Gin and Gramps in the last couple of years? She turned in the direction of the bathroom. To her back, Tatiana said, “Merry-juana Christmas.”
    Holly inhaled sharply, but she checked the impulse to turn around. She could not turn around. If she did, she would have to face some expression she didn’t want to see on her daughter’s face—disapproval, contempt, dislike ? She didn’t want to see it or to acknowledge it—especially not now, with addled family members and unpleasant colleagues (and friends, good friends, don’t forget them) on the way. She would never have time to get everything ready before they all arrived for Christmas dinner. She still had a shower to take, and a roast to cook, and a table to set, and a bed to be made, and—
    And then it came back to her like a bit of breeze stirred up gently by a few cold fingers:
    That something she’d wanted so badly to write about when she woke up.
    She’d wanted, needed, to write it down because it was the beginning of something she had to understand, or to express, or to unearth, or to face, yet she still hadn’t found two seconds to grab a pen and to be alone to write.
    Something had followed them home.
    And it had been here in the house with them for thirteen years now. Holly had known it was here! But it was only this morning that she’d woken up knowing that she’d known.
    If only she hadn’t overslept. Certainly, now, there was no time to write. But if she hadn’t overslept, would she have had this revelation and this need to write?
    In the bathroom, she yanked the shower curtain open. Tatty’s tea tree oil shampoo bottle had fallen from the edge of the tub into the bottom of it, and Holly huffed, bent down, picked it up. It was too big, this bottle, to balance with the others in the porcelain corner. She’d told Tatty they needed to buy the smaller bottle, for this very reason, but Tatty had stood in the aisle at Whole Foods with the two shampoo bottles, one in each hand, and said, “Mom. God. The nine-ounce bottle costs two dollars less than the thirty ounce. Do you know how much money we’re wasting, not to mention plastic