Today's Reading
The final bell rang. Nine hundred high schoolers roughhoused and laughed their way to summer freedom. Soon after, Nikki slid into her Malibu. Tracy wanted her to go out for a "celebratory and completely unhealthy amount of spinach dip," but Nikki declined. The ache in her head begged for a quiet place.
She intended to drive to her apartment, crawl under the covers, and sleep off the day—the semester. Instead, she ended up parked behind her mom's car in the driveway of the two-story colonial in the heart of Kansas City, Missouri's northland. The house that had been home for all of Nikki's twenty-six years. The Werner family hub, and the core from which every branch of her existence stretched.
The For Sale sign in the front lawn had donned a new addition: a red rectangle with bold white letters. Contract Pending.
Her entire Werner life had ebbed away, piece by rotted piece. Nothing left whole. Nothing left untouched.
She stepped into the afternoon sunshine.
The shades of the living room's picture window were open, as if the house grasped at any light it could find to chase away the darkness that had settled over it. One of her earliest memories had happened at that window. She'd been four years old, nose practically touching the pane, waiting for her dad's car to turn into the drive.
She gritted her teeth against the pang and pushed forward, up the front steps. She reached for the handle of the storm door and stopped. The inside door stood open, allowing an unobstructed view into the house. Her mom knelt in the middle of the furniture-less living room. A large cardboard box sat in front of her, a stack of framed pictures on one side and a pile of dish towels on the other. She stared at the picture in her hands. Just stared. Like she tried to believe their family had ever been happy.
Such moments had caught Nikki several times over the last four months too. Moments when she saw a picture or relived a memory and the daunting question rose once more: Would anything from that point forward ever be joyful enough to capture and frame for posterity?
Slowly her mom lifted a dish towel and shrouded the picture. The ripple of grief knew no end.
Nikki drew in a breath, then knocked on the storm door.
The noise startled her mom, whose surprised expression slowly melted to one of confusion. She rose and came to the door. "Nik? What are you doing here?"
What was she doing there? What was it that had made her drive twenty-five minutes out of her way? Was she, too, grasping at any light she could find? Any semblance of the life that had been theirs only months ago?
Her chin began to tremble.
Instantly her mom wrapped her arm around her and pulled her inside. "Come on, baby. Let's have some coffee."
CHAPTER TWO
"Guess who called me." Aunt Emma had a way of starting a phone call with little prelude, as if her seventy-seven years was reason enough to move things along.
Wes laid his pen down on his desk, welcoming the excuse to not focus on projected feed bills for a moment, and leaned back in his office chair. "I can only guess Chris."
"Spot-on. He called me not more than five minutes ago, mad as a wet hen. I take it you contacted him?"
"Tried to. Left another voicemail."
"Well, you finally poked the bear, it seems. He said we all need to mind our own business, especially me since I'm not his mother."
Wes winced. An awful thing for Chris to tell his aunt—his godmother at that—who had unfailingly doted on them both their whole lives despite the distance.
"He also said he and Sheryl will no longer be coming for dinner on Sunday."
"I really stirred things up, didn't I?"
"You did what a big brother is supposed to do. We just have to keep asking for that divine whack to the side of the noggin. That's what you had to do with some of those Army boys during your sergeant days, yes? I bet you asked for a good many divine whacks for that bunch."
Several names of privates rose from his memory banks. "In so many words, yes."
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