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Chapter Fourteen
She’s dreaming about being stuck inan elevator with a group of women she doesn’t know. They are speaking a language she doesn’t recognize or understand, and seem blissfully unaware they’re not moving. “Excuse me,” she tells them, trying to push her way through the crowd to the doors. One of the women swivels toward her. “You’re wearing very strong perfume,” she chastises her in perfect English. “I’m afraid you’ll have to leave.” The doors to the elevator suddenly open and the woman pushes Heidi into the wire-filled black abyss.
Heidi bolts up in bed. “Holy crap,” she says when she can find her voice. She takes a series of deep breaths, feeling the nightmare break into pixels around her, until there is nothing left but the dark hole she fell into. “Aiden?” she whispers, peering through the darkness for her husband, seeking the reassurance of his strong arms.
Except he isn’t there.
Heidi reaches over to turn on the lamp beside the bed. The lamp looks like a rectangular block of ice topped by an oblong black shade, and Heidi has never liked it. It’s too modern for her taste and the black shade guarantees very little light escapes. “It’s more than enough light,” Lisa had insisted when she selected it over the white-shaded, floral porcelain lamp that Heidi preferred. “It’s a bedroom. You don’t need it too bright.”
“What if I want to read in bed?” Heidi recalls asking.
Lisa hadn’t bothered to respond. Her dubiously raised right eyebrow said it all.
“Aiden?” Heidi says again, looking toward the bathroom. But the bathroom door is open and it’s obvious Aiden isn’t there. Which means he’s probably downstairs watching TV, something he often does when his own nightmares keep him from sleeping. But it’s almost foura.m.If he doesn’t come back to bed soon, he’ll have a hard time getting up in the morning, which would make him late for work, putting yet another job at risk.
And what would Lisa, sleeping off too much to drink at dinner in the bedroom down the hall, say about that? Whatever it would be, Heidi was sure she would get the blame.
She lies back down, trying to clear her mind of all things Lisa. But Lisa is as stubborn in the abstract as she is in the flesh, and she isn’t about to be so easily dismissed.
They’d ended up ordering ribs for dinner.
“Please don’t be mad,” Aiden whispered to his wife out of his mother’s earshot. “We’ll have what you made tomorrow. It looks really good.”
Heidi watched Lisa devour her entire order of ribs, the fact that they were loaded with garlic not seeming to bother her in the slightest. Then she carried the bottle of wine into the living room and plopped herself down in front of the TV, insisting they watch some boring documentary on the Second World War, before drifting off when it was only halfway through.
Heidi had tried to change the channel, hoping to salvage at least part of the evening by catching the last half ofThe Real Housewives,when Lisa suddenly sprang to life. “What are you doing?” she’d demanded. “I’m watching that.”
“You were asleep.”
“I was just resting my eyes. One can listen with one’s eyes closed, you know.”
One can also fuck off,Heidi thought, having to bite her tongue to keep from saying it out loud, remembering her resolve to win Lisa over.
“Is there something you’d rather watch?” Lisa asked her son.
“No,” Aiden said, deliberately ignoring the obvious plea in Heidi’s eyes. “This is fine.”
“It wouldn’t hurt you to learn a little history,” Lisa said to Heidi. “Wasn’t it Winston Churchill who said, ‘Those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it’?”
“Yes, I believe he did,” Heidi said, although the truth was that she had no idea what he’d said. She wasn’t even sure who this Winston Churchill guy was.
Of course, by the time the show ended at eleven o’clock, Lisa announced she was too tired and too drunk to drive home and would be spending the night in one of the spare bedrooms. “I might as well get used to it,” she’d said on her way up the stairs.
“What did your mother mean, she might as well get used to it?” Heidi asked as soon as she and Aiden were alone.
“You know,” he said, refusing to meet her gaze.
“I don’t know.”
“She’s moving in for a few weeks.”
“What?”
“I told you.”
“You never did!”
Aiden glanced toward their closed bedroom door, as if afraid his mother might be eavesdropping in the hall. “Don’t go getting all upset. It’s just for a few weeks, while her kitchen’s being renovated.”
