Unbreathed Memories Read Online Free PDF

sister alone. No telling what she’d do in her present condition. I considered the forest, deep and thick, surrounding us on three sides and, only yards away, the lake, dark and cold, its shoreline rimmed with ice. Against my better judgment I gave her a disapproving, big-sister glare and said, “OK, we’ll call from the pizza place. I don’t suppose it matters where we call the police from, as long as we call them.”
    Five minutes later, I was standing in a phone booth at the Lakefalls Pizzeria dialing nine-one-one. “There’s been an accident. A bad fall,” I told the operator. “Two twenty-one Coldbrook.” When she asked for my name, I panicked and hung up. Why did I do that? I leaned against the wall and counted slowly to ten. In the light from the restaurant, I could see Georgina, where she sat huddled in the front seat of my car. I went inside the pizzeria and bought her a Coke.
    “Here, drink this.”
    “I’m not thirsty.”
    “You should drink something. Here.” I grabbed her left arm and pulled it toward me. Her hand came out ofher pocket, clutching several sheets of paper. “What the hell’s that?”
    Georgina thrust the paper back into the pocket of her sweater, like a child. “Nothing.”
    “Yes it is. Let me see.” I set the Coke down on the floor of the car and held out my hand, palm up.
    “No.”
    “Georgina!”
    Slowly Georgina pulled the crumpled wad from her pocket and held it out to me, eyes downcast. “It’s pages from her appointment book. I took it because my name’s in it.”
    “For the love of God, Georgina! You’re her patient! Your name’s supposed to be in there!” I snatched the pages from her fingers. “First you make me guilty of leaving the scene of an accident—maybe even a crime!—and now you’re tampering with the evidence!” Sirens began wailing, approaching in our direction down Falls Road. I stuffed the pages from Dr. Sturges’s appointment book into the depths of my bag. “And it’s too late to put them back now, the police are already on their way.” I threw my head back against my headrest and closed my eyes. “Oh, God, what a mess! I’ll deliver these to the police myself, but in the meantime, I’m taking you home. You’re going to have a nice, hot bath and tell Scott all about it. You’re going to pull yourself together. Then, first thing in the morning, you’re going to talk to the police.”
    But it didn’t quite work out that way. I should have known better after watching Homicide all those years on NBC. The Baltimore police would turn up on Georgina’s doorstep the following morning, even before Sean and Dylan made it out of bed to turn on the television.

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    Nothing that happened after I brought Georgina home from Dr. Sturges’s prepared me for an early-morning visit from Baltimore’s Finest, least of all the wine. It would help me to relax, I reasoned; but after too many glasses to count, I decided I’d just sleep forever, even on the lumpy mattress that spat cookie crumbs all over me when I wrestled the ancient hide-a-bed open in Georgina’s TV room. Whatever was in Scott’s Box-o’-Chablis knocked me out cold from eleven-thirty until five, at which time my eyes flew open and my throbbing head told me it wished I’d had the brains to take some Alka-Seltzer before putting it to bed. As I lay flat on my back with the pale light of a gray dawn creeping around the corners of the window shade, I relived the previous evening.
    Georgina had been a total wreck. The minute we hit the house she collapsed into a chair like a puppet with cut strings, leaving me to explain to Scott what had happened. He listened, nodding, with red-rimmed eyes as cold and pale as arctic ice, then folded his catatonicwife into his arms and led her away in the direction of the bedroom. I think Scott really wanted me to go home. To tell the truth, I felt like a fifth wheel, but after everything that had happened, I just couldn’t face the long drive