You Must Remember This by Kat Rosenfield EPUB & PDF – eBook Details
- Author: Kat Rosenfield
- Language: English
- Genre:
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 1 MB
- Price: Free
2014
December
I woke to the sound of footsteps. Angry and rhythmic, a march back and
forth right under my window.
I peeled my eyes open, reaching automatically toward the nightstand,
grunting when the phone slipped out of my fingers and clattered to the
floor. The house creaked and settled, buffeted lightly by the wind. I groaned
along with it. I’d slept badly again, uncomfortable in a house and a bed that
didn’t belong to me. It had been easier in New York—if not easier to sleep,
then easier to feel like it was okay that I didn’t. Restless nights were just
part of the constant noise and movement of the city; there, I was like a
single cell that belonged to a huge, quivering organism as fidgety and
restless as I was.
Maine was different at night. Too dark and too quiet, except for the eerie
muttering that gave the house its name and that set my teeth on edge. I had
been at the Whispers just over six months, but I wouldn’t feel at home here
if I stayed ten years.
Beyond the warped and wavy glass of my bedroom window was a copse
of barren trees with a few dark evergreens nestled among them, the
yellowing grass of the lawn. Beyond the trees, just a glimpse of cold gray
water, where the bay crept inland and became a river. Mine was one of only
a few rooms without a view.
The house sat at the mouth of the harbor,
perched on a high point with a steep descent toward the water on one side.
Every room there was outfitted with porches and balconies so that its
occupants could take in the sea, but my bedroom was on the other side,
where a white gravel piazza spanned the length of the front facade, tapering
at one end to a narrow driveway that snaked away through the trees.
This was the source of the noise: my mother was out there, marching
back and forth on the gravel to a point about twenty feet from the front door
—the place where a person would first be able to glimpse a car as it came
around the curve approaching the house.
I could see her through the
window every time she reached her destination. Ten steps out, a pause, then
a heel turn. Ten steps back, another turn, another ten steps, repeat.
Even from three stories up, the scuffing of feet was audible, and this was
not an accident. Nervous noise was Dora Lockwood’s preferred mode of
communication when she was unhappy: taps, clicks, heavy footsteps, the
conspicuous roar of the vacuum cleaner.
Anything but actual words. One of
my most vivid memories from childhood—one of the last ones my father
was still around for—was of her sitting at the dinner table, methodically
plucking ice cubes out of a glass and crushing them between her teeth. Not
speaking, barely touching the food on her plate, just sipping at the melted
ice water and then going to town on a new cube. Crunch, crunch, crunch.
It kept on until the glass was nearly empty and I thought I was going to
scream.
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