The fury burned hotter in her flesh.
There was still one thing she had to do to truly clean the bedroom.
Launching herself up from the pallet of blankets, she gripped the mattress by the edge of its lumpy belly and, with all of her strength, flipped it over the other side of the bedframe. The mattress tipped up onto its side and toppled over onto the floor. It came to rest at an awkward angle against a closet door on the far wall.
Kris stormed around the foot of the bedframe, which now held only a fraying box spring, then dug her fingers into the corner of the mattress and yanked it toward the open door. She had to angle it just right to make the turn from the doorway into the hallway, maneuvering it around the foot of the staircase and around the corner. Once the mattress was lined up perfectly with the entryway to the great room, she moved behind it and shoved hard. Whether the indention she felt the night before had been real or imagined, the mattress began to sag in that exact spot, drooping until one side kissed the hallway wall.
With a furious grunt, she planted her bare feet into the wood floor and rammed her shoulder into the end of the mattress, driving it all the way down the hall like a linebacker with a practice sled. Only once the mattress was through the entryway and into the great room did she stop. She stood, panting in her T-shirt and underwear, her hands clenched into fists at her side, and watched as the thirty-something-year-old mattress crumpled pathetically to the ground.
Now she just had to get it out the front door and onto the porch. From there, she didn’t care what happened to it. There was no way she could navigate such a cumbersome object over the crooked path leading to the front drive. She decided she would simply drag the goddamn thing to the edge of the porch and toss it into the weeds. All that mattered was that it was out of the house.
Kris backed into the hall and paused at the door to Sadie’s room. It was open just an inch, exactly as Kris had left it the night before.
“Sweetie?” she called through the door.
She was answered by silence.
“Are you okay?”
She reached out and gave the door a gentle nudge. Its hinges squeaked faintly as the door swung open.
Sadie’s bed was empty.
From upstairs came the sound of footsteps racing by. Sadie’s laughter echoed down the staircase at the end of the hall. The sound should have filled Kris with warmth, but it made her hands tremble like vibrating piano wire.
You’re losing it, the shadow voice taunted her.
It was the nightmare, that’s all. She had woken in a fit of panic and she couldn’t shake it. She just needed to calm down, to get herself under control. She needed—
It’s morning, she realized with sudden relief. You can take another and you won’t be breaking the routine.
Spinning quickly, Kris marched into the bathroom, flicking the switch as she entered. The fluorescent light flickered to life over the sink.
She thrust a hand into the backpack on the floor and found the pill bottle. She swallowed a Xanax before she knew she had even popped the bottle top. Its powdery coating left a taste like dandelion stems on the back of her tongue.
Any second.
Any second now.
Without warning, a pleasant tickle rippled up from Kris’s stomach and into her chest and arms. She sighed in relief as the pill did its job. Her fingers relaxed against her thighs, the trembling gone. For the moment, her body was numbed like a bad tooth.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
TOMMY SAW THEM the instant they entered the store, but he quickly pulled his sweat-stained Chiefs hat down to shield his eyes and turned toward the nearest shelf, pretending to busy himself with a display of landscaping lights.
Kris couldn’t have cared less. She wasn’t there for tools or hardware. She headed straight to the Verdigris Valley Home Furnishings side of the warehouse with Sadie trailing slowly behind her.
A row of mattresses on steel frames lined the far wall. Signs taped to the ends of the mattresses touted each brand’s unbeatable pillow tops and space-age memory foam and patented Therm-a-Rest Technology.
Kris couldn’t be bothered with the details. She climbed onto the very first queen mattress and stretched out on her stomach. She looked to Sadie, who was standing impatiently at the foot of the bed, and patted the empty space beside her. Sadie crawled up next to her mother and tested the mattress with a small bounce.
“What do you think?” Kris asked.
Sadie lay down on her side and rested her cheek against the raised diamond pattern stitched into the fabric.
“It’s comfy.”
“Yeah. It is.”
“How much money is it?”
Kris reached out and gently swept a stray curl from Sadie’s face.
“Who cares?” Kris whispered with a mischievous grin. “I like it. I’m getting it. And you’re getting one, too. It’s time to stop sleeping on crappy old mattresses, don’t ya think?”
Sadie smiled back.
They were passing through downtown on their way home when Kris saw her. Her name was Alice. Kris could not recall her last name, even though she had read it just two weeks before on the bronze placard mounted outside the redwood door leading up to her office.
Dr. Alice. That’s what Kris called her when she was little. It made her giggle, thinking of Alice in Wonderland all grown-up and through med school.
“She’s not that kind of doctor,” her father had told her. “She’s like, a doctor for the mind. You can talk to her.”
“A talking doctor?” little Krissy had asked.
“Yeah,” her dad had said with a smile that held no joy. “A talking doctor.”
Daddy took you to see her. To talk about Mommy.
And now there she was, Dr. Alice, thirty years older and just as elegant as Kris remembered. She had to be nearing seventy, but her shoulders were as straight as a board, her hair only showing a few stitches of gray among the black.
Kris watched her stroll confidently down the sidewalk, waiting to see if she would glance over, if by some chance she would recognize Kris. But she did not turn her gaze from the path before her. Only when Alice reached the end of the block did she glance quickly to the side to check for the nonexistent downtown traffic. She crossed the street to the next block and, halfway up, she slipped through the red doorway, disappearing up the stairs.
It did not even occur to Kris to go straight down Center Street toward Jefferson Park, or to pull a U-turn and head back toward the fork that would take them to the beginning of River Road. Her mind was still on Dr. Alice. Kris was engrossed in her own thoughts as she took the next left onto Beech Street and eased the Jeep to a soft stop at the intersection. She barely took notice of an old bearded man in grass-stained coveralls and clear plastic safety glasses, trimming the overgrown weeds along the curb with a gas-powered Craftsman edger that belched puffs of black smoke into the breeze. The man paused long enough to give a friendly wave, but Kris did not return the gesture. In her nostrils was the scent of mahogany and leather, and in her mind’s eye was Dr. Alice perched on the edge of a couch cushion, silhouetted against a tall, narrow window.
Kris was not fully conscious of her whereabouts until she had already turned left onto Birmingham Drive and felt the car angling away from downtown as it followed the curve of the road.
She attempted to conjure up an overhead view of the town, but since arriving, she had never left Center Street. Birmingham appeared to cut a diagonal through the perpendicular layout of Pacington, bucking the system of east-west numbered avenues and north-south streets named after trees.