Perfect Strangers Read Online Free PDF Page A

eating dinner. What did they have to eat last night? Meat loaf? Chicken? She couldn't remember. What was she wearing? What did they talk about? What happened yesterday that made it stand out from any other day?
    Her head was feeling light. She realized that her chest was heaving and she told herself to calm down, to get a hold of things. Grabbing onto the edge of the table she lowered her head, closing her eyes. She heard Greg's voice in her mind telling her about his day, complaining about Sampson and the reports, day in and day out.
    Her fingers were tingling. She had to get control of herself. She had to make dinner for Greg because he liked it to be ready and on the table when he came home. If it wasn't then she wouldn't be living a good life, and her life wouldn't be right and she had errands that she had to run and chores to do and Greg ate his breakfast before she did because otherwise she would just fuck it up and everything would be ruined.
    Veronica had to sit. She had to sit down right now or something bad was going to happen. She could hear a rattling noise and realized it was coming from her chest. She opened her eyes. Blurry. She had to sit down. The chair.  Greg's chair. Greg sits there and she sits over there and that would never, ever, ever change.
    Veronica lifted a hand and almost fell. Her legs felt weak. She couldn't stand. She tried lifting it again. She felt the back of the chair against her fingers. But then it was sliding. She was sliding. Falling. She felt a sharp pain in her hip and everything moved sideways. Her head hit the floor and the last thing she saw before it all went black was the mahogany leg of the antique table that she simply had to have.
    ~~~
    Veronica's head was hurting. She opened her eyes but had to blink a few times to clear the gunk out of them. She saw a strange sight: a brown, wooden stick, intricately carved, resting on what appeared to be a cream carpet. It took her a second to realize that it was the leg of her dining room table, and that she was looking at it because she was … on the ground? That didn't make sense.
    She tried getting up but the arm pinned beneath her exploded with pins and needles. Wincing, she pushed up with her other arm so she was in a sitting position. She had a splitting headache. She tried moving her fingers slowly until the pain in them went away. She was vaguely aware of a dull throb in her hip, but she ignored that for now.
    She looked around the room. It was dark. She tried to remember what happened that would have lead her there. She was driving home from the walk, that she remembered clearly. She got out of the car, walked in the front door, okay. She went into the kitchen and that's where things started to get a little hazy. She gingerly turned her head to look up at the table beside her. Had she come into the dining room to ... lay down? Because she was tired?
    She noticed that Greg's chair was askew, set back slightly from the table. It looked like something had bumped into it or … pushed it back.
    The memory of what happened came flooding back. She had passed out. And the reason that she had passed out was because... she had had a panic attack. Veronica felt her face flush with embarrassment. She looked around her again. The house felt dark, foreboding. She slowly raised herself to her feet and walked into the kitchen. Christ, did her head hurt.
    She grabbed a glass out of the cupboard and filled it at the sink. As she gulped the water down, cutting through her parched throat, she glanced at the clock on the stove and almost choked. It was 4:15. She must've been asleep for hours.
    Dinner. She had to make dinner for Greg. She looked around the kitchen at the bare counters and stove top. Her mind raced: what did they have in the fridge? Vegetables? She could cook pasta, but she didn't have any sauce. Sandwiches? A steak?
    She settled on breakfast-for-dinner and began getting things together right away. An hour later Greg walked through the