Whitewash Read Online Free PDF Page B

fault.
    She had lived in Chicago all her life. In thirty-five years her biggest move was from downtown to the suburbs. She never felt alone in the city of 2.8 million, not even when the winters dragged on and on. Of course, restlessness would set in. How could it not with the mountains of black, smudged snow and ice piled up along the streets? In the bleak midwinter, bundled strangers passed each other with no eye contact, all of them focused on one single thing—warmth and getting back into it. But that was just a part of winter living in the Midwest.
    Her schedule and routine kept her busy. Her students kept her entertained. And until two years ago she had a family who was her lifeline: a slightly neurotic but loving mother, a brilliant, doting father and a reckless but charming brother who had also been her best friend. She never imagined they’d all be swept away in less than a day.
    No, Florida wasn’t the problem. It didn’t take a Ph.D. for Sabrina to figure out what she was feeling came from deep inside her, not around her. If nothing else, warm and sunny Florida could and should be a catalyst. At least the residents of Tallahassee made eye contact when they met you on the street. Though Sabrina suspected it was to look her over and quickly determine—although they didn’t say it, their eyes did—“you’re not from around here, are you?”
    She wondered how they could tell. What exactly was it that gave her away?
    She glanced through the newspaper, taking time to read only the headlines as she poured a quarter cup of skim milk into a mug and filled the rest of it with coffee. Below the fold on page three a headline caught her attention: Jackson Springs Bottled Water Recall.
    She drove by the family-owned bottling company every day on her way to EchoEnergy. She shook her head, not really surprised. As a scientist she believed the federal government did a poor job of regulating municipal water supplies, allowing much too high levels of arsenic and other dangerous contaminants in regular tap water. That they thought they could regulate bottled water any better was a joke. She sipped the lukewarm coffee and worried more about the caffeine in it than the water. She hadn’t gotten a decent night’s sleep since she moved to Tallahassee and yet she knew caffeine was probably the least of her worries. She only wished it could be that easy.
    Her friend Olivia liked to remind her that within less than a year Sabrina had picked up and moved to a part of the country she had never even visited before. Throw in a new job in an industry she had never been a part of and add to it the role of caregiver. “Of course it’s the caffeine that’s stressing you out and keeping you awake at night,” Olivia would conclude, her tongue firmly planted in her cheek.
    Sabrina gulped down the coffee and set aside the mug. Her fingertips absently rubbed where the diamond ring used to be on her ring finger. She’d never had it resized and it was loose. She constantly worried about losing it as she pulled on and off latex gloves on a regular basis. The ring sat safely in its box in her dresser drawer, tucked away so she wouldn’t lose it down a drain.
    Who was she fooling? She had really taken it off because all of its meaning and promises had already gone down the drain. This move had cost her much more than she’d ever anticipated.
    Actually, the new job was a lifesaver. She was a scientist, after all. She thrived on new puzzles, concocting solutions to unsolvable problems, finding alternatives to old, worn-out remedies. It came naturally, instinctive, an insatiable curiosity. It was about time she was out in the real world confronting the challenges instead of sitting back, debating and theorizing them. For ten years she had focused so much of her attention on making tenure that maybe she had forgotten the thrill of discovery.
    When she was a kid this job at EchoEnergy would have been exactly the kind of stuff she had dreamed about