What Alice Forgot - Liane Moriarty [76]
She went to her own bedroom and quickly found shorts and a T-shirt in the chest of drawers, and her sneakers and sunglasses still in the rucksack she’d brought back from the hospital. She hurried back downstairs and pulled off one of the baseball caps from the hat stand. It said PHILADELPHIA on the brim.
She left the house, locking the door behind her and noting with relief that Mrs. Bergen had gone back inside.
Which way? She turned to the left and took off at a brisk pace. A woman was approaching from the other direction, wheeling a stroller with a sternfaced baby who was sitting very straight-backed and solemn. As Alice got closer, the baby frowned up at her, while the woman smiled and said, “Not running today?”
“Not today.” Alice smiled back and kept walking.
Running? Good heavens. She hated running. She remembered the way she and her friend Sophie used to shuffle around the oval in the high school, moaning and clutching their sides, while Mr. Gillespie called out, “Oh for God’s sakes, you girls!”
Sophie! She would give Sophie a call when she got home. If she hadn’t been confiding in Elisabeth, maybe Sophie knew more about what was going on with her and Nick.
She kept walking, seeing houses that had doubled in size, like cakes in the oven. Red-brick cottages had been transformed into smooth mushroomcolored mansions with pillars and turrets.
Actually, it was interesting, because she was walking quicker and quicker, sort of bouncing along the pavement, and the idea of running didn’t seem that stupid at all. It seemed sort of . . . pleasant.
Was it a bad idea with a head injury? Probably a very bad idea. But maybe it would jar all those memories back into place.
She began to run.
Her arms and legs fell into a smooth rhythm; she began to breathe deep, slow breaths, in through the nostrils and out through the mouth. Oh, this felt good. It felt right. It felt like something she did.
At Rawson Street she turned left and picked up her pace. The fat red leaves of the liquid ambers trembled in the sunlight. A white car packed with teenagers screeched by, thudding with music. She passed a driveway where a group of kids were shrieking and brandishing water guns. Someone started up a lawn mower.
Up ahead, the white car with the teenagers pulled up at the corner.
A momentous feeling of panic exploded in her chest. It was happening again, just like in the car with Elisabeth. Her legs quivered so ridiculously she actually had to crouch down on the footpath, waiting for whatever it was to pass. A scream of horror was lodged in her throat. If she let it out, it would be very embarrassing.
She looked around, her hands on the ground to balance herself, her chest heaving, and saw that the children with the water pistols were still running back and forth, as if the world hadn’t turned black and evil. She looked back at the end of the street where the white car was waiting for a break in the traffic.
It was something to do with a car pulling up at that corner.
She closed her eyes and saw the brake lights of a green four-wheel-drive. The number plate said: GINA 333.
Nothing else. She felt simultaneously hot and cold, as if she had the flu. For God’s sake. Was she about to be sick again? All that custard tart. The children could clean it up with their