Page 95 of Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire)
I’d long since stopped pedaling, because what he’d described—it sounded exactly like Hope. “She’s had a dodgy stomach,” I said slowly. “Ever since we came back from En Zed. Tired. Crying some, too, and that’s not usual. That’s notever.But that’s not…that can’t…it’s what I said. The timing’s wrong. And anyway, she’d have told me.”
I tried to suppress the disappointment, just as I’d tamped down a surge of excitement at Eugene’s description that had shocked me into breathlessness. Hope might not have been the only one who’d had some trouble with moods lately.
“Maybe not, then,” Eugene said, “but if it ain’t that? Then it’ssomethinggoing on. I told her to go get checked out. She ever do that?”
“No.” I was pedaling again, because I couldn’t sit still. “Told me she was fine, that it was nothing serious.”
“Hmm,” Eugene said. “Now, Karen got real sick like that, and their mama died, right? Least that’s what Debra said.”
“Yeh. Cancer, when she was…dunno. Late thirties, I’m guessing.” My scalp was prickling, and everything had changed again. Now, it was the creeping fear that I couldn’t pedal away.
“Which means if Hope did have something wrong with her,” Eugene said, “maybe she wouldn’t want to find out. Maybe it would scare her too bad to even think about, leaving Karen like that, the same way she got left. Or maybe shedidfind out, and she didn’t want to tell you. Whatever it is, don’t you think you better ask?”
“I tried asking.”
Hope didn’t have anything wrong with her, I told myself. She couldn’t have. Not like that. Nothing but an upset stomach, a little fatigue. She’d had a new job and a new living situation, and neither of them had been easy for her. That had to be all it was. The cold dread in the pit of my stomach tried to tell me something else, and I shoved it away.
“You sure you asked?” Eugene said. “Or did it get caught up in everything else, and all you said was what she ought to do? What’d you do, tell her to stop being so stupid?” When I stopped pedaling again, he sighed and shook his head. “Don’t tell me. What was the word?”
“What word?”
He gave me a stare that compelled the truth from me. “The word you used.”
“Childish,” I admitted. “I may have said ‘irrational,’ too. Maybe a couple other things. Because she was.”
“Now, how did I know? Bet that went overrealgood. Here’s the cold, hard truth, and I’m telling it to you, even though you’re not one bit ready to listen. The point with a woman ain’t winning. The point iskeeping.If she ain’t in your bed anymore, you ain’t winning.”
He didn’t have to explain that. I got it. “Which doesn’t help,” I informed him, “not if I don’t know what I’m meant to do to get her to come home.” And to the doctor, too. Just to check. Just in case.
“Could start with an apology. That’s generally a pretty good spot, ‘cause it’s the hardest, and women do like it when you try your hardest.” He picked up his bag from the corner. “Or you could try something else, of course, since you probably think you got a better idea, or if you can’t apologize ‘cause you know you were right. Only thing I know for sure is, ain’t no motto in the world that goes, ‘I Give Up.’”
Hope
Let’s just pass over the days between Friday and Tuesday, shall we? Suffice it to say that I’d found out what it was like to be alone, and I hated it.
I know it’s weird that I hadn’t had the experience before, but I hadn’t. Other than the occasional night when Karen had slept over at a friend’s, I’d never been alone inbed,let alone in a whole apartment. And it was lonesome. As hot as it was, I still missed the warmth of another body.
I missed Karen, even though I called her every night. And, oh, how I missed Hemi. How I questioned my decision, even though I knew it had been the only one possible.
I missed his touch. I missed his voice. I missed his smell. But a woman who lost her breath and nearly had a panic attack from climbing the stairs and walking into an empty apartment, who burst into tears at the sight of her single toothbrush in the rack and wept through a Katherine Hepburn movie because Spencer Tracy would never love her for her wit and her brains and her success, and neither would Hemi—that woman had no business getting married to a man that powerful and complex. A woman like that had damn well better start getting a backbone.
And, yes, I do realize that I was declaring my independence by living in an apartment on which my boyfriend had paid the rent, and that my very electric bill was being covered by said boyfriend. Which was why I needed a job, and I needed it fast. I had a few thousand dollars in my personal account from before Hemi had opened the joint one, and that was my spending limit. And as soon as I had a job…rent.
Did I get that the money wouldn’t exactly make a big dent in his wallet, and that it would infuriate him to start getting rent checks from me? Sure I did. But all I had to navigate by was my own intuition, my own judgment. Otherwise, with no job, no sister, and no Hemi, I was rudderless.
Oh, and sick, too, my lightheaded episodes exacerbated by the heat. On Sunday, I had to stop on the way home from the store to lean against the wall before I could go on. On Monday afternoon, I walked upstairs with my laundry basket and had to put my head between my knees again. On Tuesday, I gave in and called the doctor.
“It’s probably nothing,” I told Dr. Galbraith that afternoon, after I’d braved the subway to Manhattan and nearly passed out again from being in the crowd. “Probably anxiety or low iron or something. Those can cause this kind of thing, right? I hardly ever get sick.”
I didn’t say what I feared, the thought that had me waking in the middle of the night. That this was how my mother had been, before she’d gotten even sicker. Before she’d died.
I wasn’t a hypochondriac, though. I’d never been one to imagine that every headache was a brain tumor. It would be something simple and easily fixed. It had to be. I was Karen’s guardian.
Then where is she?the nagging voice in my head whispered, even as I tried to shake it loose.Who’s looking out for her? Who’s left her?
“Hmm,” Dr. Galbraith said, a word they must teach in medical school. She’d listened to my heart and had apparently found that it was still beating. “Well, when we hear hoofbeats, we look for horses, not for zebras. When was your last period?”
“Uh…four weeks ago. Due any day. You think it’s PMS? That’s how I feel. Probably it.” I’d been stupid to come, and stupider to imagine I was sick. I was just looking for excuses to lie in bed and sleep, that was the truth.
