Chapter 3 - The Sanctuary of Cold Tea
In the quiet house, Martha did not speak to Clara about Ryan. Instead, she set an iron kettle on the blue flame of the gas stove, moving with the practiced efficiency of women who had survived wars and sudden bereavements. The steam rose, fogging the narrow pane above the sink.
Clara remained in the armchair. The ice pack wrapped in a floral tea towel had melted, lukewarm water seeping down her clavicle into the collar of her cream knit sweater. Her cheek was swollen to the size of a plum, tight and hot, the color of spoiled damsons.
"Drink," Martha said, setting a chipped mug on the side table. Chamomile. It tasted like grass and old dust, but Clara held the mug with both hands for the heat.
"I called the locksmith," Martha said, pulling a wooden straight-back chair close, her knees brushing Clara’s jeans. "He’ll be here by four. We’re changing every deadbolt."
"Mom," Clara whispered. Her voice sounded like two dry leaves scraping across concrete. "The dog needs to be walked."
May you like
"The dog is gone, Clara. Honey, Buster died in twenty-two."
Clara closed her eyes. The pain inside her skull blossomed outward, behind her eyes, pressing against her temples. She was thirty-two years old, had graduated with honors in art history, could catalog eighteenth-century porcelain by touch, yet her memory was unraveling at the edges. She had spent eighteen months editing her own reality so thoroughly to survive Ryan’s shifting temperaments that she no longer knew which losses were real and which were imagined.
