April Emerson The Righteous

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.It’s the routine she needs, not the food.She never feels hungry anymore.Her fingers work independently from her brain as she gazes out the window at the empty lot next door.She eats alone in silence.After dinner, she grabs the box from under the bed and brushes her fingers across the etched wood.She knows she shouldn’t look, but Emma opens the lid.like she does every night.Sleep still has its arms around Emma when an uninvited, but not unwelcome, guest arrives the next morning.Emma sits, wrapped in a warm sweater, reading the paper.Her closest friend, Danielle, never knocks.After letting herself in, she drops her gym bag on the floor and joins Emma at the kitchen table.“We’re going out Friday.You should come.”“Danni, I don’t want to.I just don’t have the energy,” Emma says.She doesn’t look up from her newspaper.Danielle pulls her light blond hair up into a sloppy bun and rolls her eyes.“You’re thirty, Emma, not eighty.You can’t stay locked in this house forever.It’s not normal.”Exasperated, Emma puts down the paper.“Normal? Nothing about me is normal.” She returns to reading, rubbing her thumb against her empty ring finger.“You know what I mean.You need to get out of here and meet people.This house is crumbling around you.”“In this town? I think I’ve met everyone there is to meet in Pine Lake.”“I don’t know about that.A lot changed while you were away.”“Tell me about it.” Emma pushes her chair from the table with frustration and tosses the paper in the trash.When Emma leaves for work, she spots her enemy—the bulldozer that woke her up on Saturday.It now rests at the side of the road.She narrows her eyes at it, revs the engine, and shifts her old car into drive.It rumbles into the town gas station as it has every morning for the past six months, and a single thought repeats through Emma’s brain.Coffee, coffee, coffee.She walks toward the glass doors and strikes her palm against her forehead when she realizes she has forgotten her wallet.She turns to fetch her purse but stumbles into the person behind her.She steps back, rubbing the tip of her nose.It burns from banging into this man’s chest.“I’m sorry.Excuse me,” she says.The man says nothing.Emma looks up at him and becomes entranced.He has short, dark hair, and thick, unshaven stubble covers his haunting, handsome face.His full lips twitch into an almost smile, and his eyes.Emma’s frozen in the storm of this man’s eyes.They’re a deep, cloudy blue, like a sky that’s waiting for rain to fall.They drill into her, and she can’t look away.He touches her arm, and the unexpected contact causes her to take a sharp breath.She opens her mouth to speak, but isn’t given a chance.The dreamlike quality of this moment persists as he takes her elbow in his firm grip.Still silent, he guides her out of his path and continues past her into the gas station.Dazed, she watches him walk away, but he doesn’t look back.He takes an orange juice from the cooler and begins to drink it before he’s paid, moving like the world belongs to him and he couldn’t be less impressed by it.Emma’s embarrassed and retreats to her car.She turns the key, and her coffee is forgotten as she speeds down the country road.At work, she stands at the chalkboard all day.She speaks as if from a script and goes through the motions, but all she can see are that beautiful man’s stormy eyes.Eric Wilder steps off a plane and is greeted by familiar things.Things that are constant and never change: fresh air, big sky, and thick trees.They should comfort him, but they don’t.Dressed in flannel and denim, his modest clothes don’t match his wealth.A striking face in a sea of faceless strangers, he’s out of place but trying to act the part, to remember what his life was like in the northeast before he left.He wonders if the choice to return is the right one, but won’t allow himself to feel regret.He gets into a black Jeep and stares out the windshield at the endless, blurry green.A mantra repeats in his head: I’m not running.I’m moving on.He lies to himself, and he believes the lie.Sean’s living room is adorned with a massive television, shelves of video games, and several game systems.These items are irrelevant to Eric, who sits on his friend’s couch, drinking orange juice and dragging his hand across his unshaven face.“You’re getting married? Seriously?” Eric asks.“I know.It’s hard to believe,” Sean says.“I never thought I could be tied to just one girl, but wait till you meet her.Danielle is amazing.”Sean and Eric haven’t seen each other in years and haven’t spoken much in that time, not because they didn’t miss each other, but because Eric is a failure at correspondence, and had no real desire to connect with friends from his old life.Sean was the one person Eric knew he could contact after his life went awry.Eric’s bad habits almost led to his demise, but he’s here now, in Pine Lake, ready to start fresh.He needs a place to stay while the house is being built, but he won’t impose on Sean.Solitude is preferable, anyway.Eric’s darkness demands it.At the used car lot, a wad of cash is pulled from Eric’s pocket as he pays the salesman and hooks a small, silver trailer onto the hitch of his black Jeep.It reminds him of a bullet, a pill, a prison.But it’s not a prison.It’s freedom.Passing through the thick woods, he drives to the new property.The one-lane road feels lonely, and it is.There’s a solitary old white house at the end of the street [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Pokrewne