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I love you, baby, I’m sorry, Jolene heard her mother say.
Jolene righted herself slowly and turned. Her parents were locked in one of those movie embraces, the kind reserved for lovers reuniting after a war. Her mother clung to him desperately, grabbing the plaid wool of his shirt.
Her father swayed drunkenly, as if held up by her alone, but that was impossible. He was a huge man, tall and broad, with hands like turkey platters; mom was as frail and white as an eggshell. It was from him that Jolene got her height.
“You can’t leave me,” her mother sobbed, slurring the words.
Her father looked away. For a split second, Jolene saw the pain in his eyes— pain, and worse, shame and loss and regret.
“I need a drink,” he said in a voice roughened by years of smoking unfiltered cigarettes.
He took her mother’s hand, dragged her through the kitchen. Looking dazed but grinning foolishly, her mother stumbled along behind him, heedless of the fact that she was barefooted.
It wasn’t until he opened the back door that Jolene got it. “No!” she yelled, scrambling to her feet, running after them.
Outside, the February night was cold and dark. Rain hammered the roof and ran in rivulets over the edges of the eaves. Her father’s leased logging truck, the only thing he really cared about, sat like some huge black insect in the driveway. She ran out onto the wooden porch, tripping over a chainsaw, righting herself.
Her mother paused at the car’s open passenger door, looked at her. Rain plastered the hair across her hollow cheeks, made her mascara run. She lifted a hand, pale and shaking, and waved.
“Get out of the rain, Karen,” her father yelled, and her mother complied instantly. In a second, both doors slammed shut. The car backed up, turned onto the road, drove away.
And Jolene was alone again.
Four months, she thought dully. Only four more months and she would graduate from high school and be able to leave home.
Home. Whatever that meant.
But what would she do? Where would she go? There was no money for college, and what money Jolene saved from work her parents invariably found and “borrowed.” She didn’t even have enough for first month’s rent.
She didn’t know how long she stood there, thinking, worrying, watching rain turn the driveway to mud; all she really knew was that at some point she became aware of an impossible, unearthly flash of color in the night.
Red. The color of blood and fire and loss.
When the police car pulled up into her yard, she wasn’t surprised. What surprised her was how it felt, hearing that her parents were dead.
What surprised her was how hard she cried.
One
April 2005
On her forty-first birthday, as on every other day, Jolene Zarkades woke before the dawn. Careful not to disturb her sleeping husband, she climbed out of bed, dressed in her running clothes, pulled her long blond hair into a ponytail, and went outside.
It was a beautiful, blue-skied spring day. The plum trees that lined her driveway were in full bloom. Tiny pink blossoms floated across the green, green field. Across the street, the Sound was a deep and vibrant blue. The soaring, snow-covered Olympic mountains rose majestically into the sky.
Perfect visibility.
She ran along the beach road for exactly three and a half miles and then turned for home. By the time she returned to her driveway, she was red-faced and breathing hard. On her porch, she picked her way past the mismatched wood and wicker furniture and went into the house, where the rich, tantalizing scent of French roast coffee mingled with the acrid tinge of wood smoke.
The first thing she did was to turn on the TV in the kitchen; it was already set on CNN. As she poured her coffee, she waited impatiently for news on the Iraq war.
No heavy fighting was being reported this morning. No soldiers— or friends— had been killed in the night.
“Thank God,” she said. Taking her coffee, she went upstairs, walking past her daughters’ bedrooms and toward her own. It was still early. Maybe she would wake Michael with a long, slow kiss. An invitation.
How long had it been since they made love in the morning? How long since they’d made love at all? She couldn’t remember. Her birthday seemed a perfect day to change all that. She opened the door. “Michael?”
Their king-sized bed was empty. Unmade. Michael’s black tee shirt— the one he slept in— lay in a rumpled heap on the floor. She picked it up and folded it in precise thirds and put it away. “Michael?” she said again, opening the bathroom door. Steam billowed out, clouded her view.
