The Remedy for Love: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

as if it had grown soft in his absence.
    They stayed up there that way three days, bike excursions east and west and north, a honeymoon like they hadn’t let themselves have in Prague (that she hadn’t let them have), stayed past their food, an extra day, giddy on the way back out with fasting and promises. Give her a month, is all she asked. They felt they’d solved the puzzle of their fractured marriage, one of those long algorithms from college math.
    Tonight would be like those nights!
    He felt a moral tug. Danielle had food. Danielle had shelter. She had firewood, now. But Danielle was alone, and with an injury, and very likely unstable. A small accident would be amplified. What if she burned herself or fell from her loft? He certainly knew of dozens of such cases, small-town law. That little girl who’d cooked to death in the back of her parents’ van parked outside the Sugarwood Grille, hot August afternoon? Or poor Kurt LaFarge, who fell on the North Church steps in the snow one Saturday night, last man out after choir, broke his neck and froze solid, ambulance and police and sheriff and medical examiner still there as the parishioners arrived the next morning. Pastor Tony paid for that one, and unfairly: gross negligence. Eric might have done more for the girl, was the point. Danielle would need more water, for example. Or did ghosts never drink?
    He trudged, made the road, crossed to the veterinary parking lot, climbed in his car and started it, sat a few minutes catching his breath. Really, that was a very hard climb in these conditions. His own pants legs were soaked, but the boots had kept his socks dry. The veterinarian—a crabbed old soul when it came to humans and a well-known killer of show dogs—looked out her window at him, the longest look, no expression on her face. He gave a short wave, and she disappeared behind the curtain so fast that he felt like a magician.
    Findings: Ms. Danielle would be alone down there for several days. A life on Doritos and ramen noodles. At least she had wine. A blizzard called for a box of wine, simple as that, no need to judge. Alison was probably on her way, should really be on her way if she was going to make it. And then—no doubt she’d thought of this—maybe she’d be snowed in and he’d get to make her breakfast after all, maybe a few days of breakfasts, if the Weather Channel was right. Unbidden, a certain bra came to mind, gray satin. From back in the day. He felt his hand upon its clasp. He checked his phone. No calls, no texts, no tweets, no e-mails, not a word on Facebook, not from Alison anyway, not a peep from Alison, who’d done nothing but stand him up for months, if he admitted it. He stifled a wave of anger, checked Troy Polamalu’s game stats one more time: fantasy football. Then the weather: the Winter Storm Warning had been upgraded to a Winter Storm Emergency. He’d never seen that designation. And a link to a checklist for disaster preparedness.
    There was about an hour before the day would get swallowed by the storm and he was wet anyway and there was this terrible sense of responsibility, also the food he’d bought: she’d need everything she could get, and he had all he needed: Alison wasn’t going to show, third month in a row, and who was he kidding? Fourth in a row. He was no masochist. He heard his father’s voice:
face facts.
The snow was building, building. No more cars coming in and out of the veterinarian’s lot, just the Mercedes with the SPAY plates. No cars on the road, either.
    He retrieved his bags of groceries, left the expensive wine in, why not? He had beer at home. Plenty of daylight. The snarly old poodle of a vet was spying on him again, glowering out the window at him. He’d won the case for his client, that’s all, had never thought twice about continuing to bring his dog to Dr. Mia Arnold, but then he hadn’t needed to: poor Ribbie, living now with Alison down in Portland, another stab of anger.
    A lot of