Seeking Sara Summers Read Online Free PDF Page A

down a long white hallway and waited for the elevator. Once inside, she pushed L for Lobby and thought: Life. Life Lost. Loser. The cancer was back.
    The doors opened in the expansive white lobby subsidized by cancer. It was filled with floor to ceiling windows, an assortment of larger fake plants, and a waiting area full of people flipping nervously through magazines. Life is so tenuous, she thought, and we fool ourselves into thinking it isn’t.
    Her footsteps echoed in the parking garage, strangely deserted in the middle of the day. Sara called the school to tell them she wouldn’t be back that afternoon and went home to an empty house, except for Luke, who was ecstatic to see her.
    Sara grabbed his leash in the pantry and hooked him up for a walk. Walking helped her process things. It helped her think. Luke led the way around a large block in their neighborhood lined with older homes. He sniffed and revisited his habitual places, a favorite bush, the elm tree at the corner, and a concrete lion on a driveway at the end of the road.
    Her appointment with Doctor Morgan played over in her mind. He had not said the words but the implication was there: to get her affairs in order. But what affairs? Except for her grandmother’s ring, she didn’t really own anything apart from Grady. He would take care of everything. If anything, they were over-insured, over-prepared for external disasters. It seemed the things Sara needed to get in order were internal things. But how do you make peace and assign meaning to a life that was spent merely sleepwalking?
    You’re being too hard on yourself, the voice said.
    Well that’s a switch, Sara thought. If the critical voice in my head is defending me, I must really be in trouble.
    Back at the house, Iris Whitworth, an elderly neighbor, watched Sara from her dining room window. The old woman seldom bothered to hide her interest. Sara waved and the curtain closed.
    “What will she do if she doesn’t have me around to watch?” Sara said to Luke. She pulled her jacket closer. The weather was changing. Clouds covered the sun.
    Sara went inside and filled a tall glass with tap water and drank it completely, hoping its basic elements would ground her. Out the kitchen window, snow with large, moisture-laden flakes filled the sky. Winter had arrived.
    Minutes later the kitchen door slammed. Sara jumped as Grady walked into the kitchen.
    “Didn’t mean to scare you,” he said.
    “I was just deep in thought.” Sara could count on Grady not to pursue what she had been thinking.
    He placed his canvas briefcase on a kitchen chair and removed the bands from the legs of his pants that he wore when he rode his bicycle home. Flakes of snow melted at his feet. He sifted through the stack of mail on the table and asked about her day, not even looking up.
    “It was uneventful, really.” She lied. She would not tell Grady what the doctor had said, at least not yet.
    For the first time Sara noticed that she and Grady were dressed alike. He wore a white shirt with his khaki pants. She wore a white sweater with her khaki skirt. Their pale faces emerged from an unintentional forest of yuppie camouflage.
    Grady loosened his green tie dotted with small red peppers, a Christmas gift from their daughter, Jessica. Grady often received ties as gifts. His growing collection had taken over their closet. Despite the vertical strip of color dividing his chest, he always looked the same.
    Birds visited the feeder outside the kitchen window. Sara made dinner, numb to her surroundings. During their usual silence at the dinner table Sara’s finite life felt unending. News reports blared on the small television that sat on a nearby counter. Voices on the television took the place of their own. Far away disasters distracted them from the quiet one right there in the room.
    She thought of the sparrows in the rafters of the home improvement store and pushed the winter squash from one edge of her plate to the other.