Things We Didn't Say_ A Novel - Kristina Riggle [63]
“Well, I guess if you can manage it,” I said.
He kissed my forehead. “I think I’d manage just fine.” He moved on to my neck. “I’ll have a baby with you.”
I shivered with delight as he continued kissing my neck.
Then he said, “It would make a nice change to make a baby with someone not crazy.”
The delicious shivers evaporated, and I moved away from the reach of his lips. He looked at me with a wrinkled brow.
“I think I hear a kid on the steps,” I lied.
I know it was a favorable comparison. I know I should have ignored it and kissed him back. But his ex-wife, his old life, seeped always into our most intimate moments.
And now she’s here. In our house.
I hang up from my mother and return to the fridge to rummage for some dinner. The children will be hungry soon, and life must go on.
Chapter 26
Michael
The leather interior of my dad’s Navigator makes me feel like a dwarf. I’m not short, but compared to how cramped I feel in the hand-me-down Honda, there could be a conga line in here.
“Go on, lean the seat back,” my dad tells me. “Get some rest.”
At the push of a button the seat glides down soundlessly.
I jerk back to consciousness with my mouth feeling pasty and my stomach roiling with the confusing motion of rolling along while everything in my sight is stationary. For a few seconds I don’t understand any of it.
Then my nap amnesia wears off. Dylan. Casey and Mallory at home with the girls.
“Where are we?” I ask Dad.
Now I understand what woke me up. We’ve slowed dramatically, and can see little through the windshield but taillights and snow so thick it’s like a wall.
My father is tense on the wheel, his mustache twitching, eyes narrow as he searches for passage.
The appeal of a big vehicle has never been clearer.
“We’re only to Ann Arbor,” he says.
He was right to drive me. I never could have been alert enough to manage this alone. I’d have caused a hundred-car pileup by now.
I consider telling him this, but he knows he’s right. It must be nice to have such confidence.
My cell phone rings, and I snatch it up, visions of disaster at home flicking to life.
It’s Evelyn. My boss.
“Hello, Evelyn. Sorry I didn’t come in today.”
“That’s fine, Michael, we understand. Any news?”
“Yes, he’s in Cleveland and we’re going to get him now. He’s fine.”
“Thank God,” she says, but she says it without emotion. I know her mind is already on the very next thing she has to say. “Look, I hate to talk to you about this over the phone, but rumors are swirling, and as we always tell our readers, it’s best to get the truth at times like this.”
“Yes” is all I can manage.
“We will be offering you a severance package, Michael. Please know it is not in any way personal or a reflection on the work you’ve done for us. There were any number of factors involved, and the decision making was an arduous, complicated process.”
“I’m sure it was. So who else got the ax?”
“Michael—”
“Evelyn. Just tell me.”
She rattles off the list. I notice Kate’s not on it. I would like to be glad for her, but she has no children to support, she’s beautiful and charismatic. She’d bounce back, probably higher than she is now.
“When’s my last day?” I ask.
“We’re keeping everyone on through the end of the year.”
“December 31?”
She pauses. “Yes.”
Happy goddamn New Year.
I become aware of my father sneaking looks at me.
Evelyn and I exchange businesslike pleasantries, and she thanks me for my years of service, but I’m not really listening as the conversation winds down and I hang up, still wondering why I didn’t make the cut.
Kate must be the rising star of the Herald, what there is left of it, anyway. She’s been using Twitter and has gathered quite a following of loyal readers who hang on her every post.
I never could figure out that damn Twitter, and it made me want to gnaw off my own hand every day when I read the comments posted beneath each of my stories on the newspaper’s Web site, from such insightful pundits as “Tigerrrfan32” and “Gdawg.” They picked apart the content of my stories, the syntax, even what I did at council meetings,