Free The Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve Page A

square the remaining papers in her lap and to set them back into the drawer. In the drawer, slightly stuck in the seam, was an unopened envelope, junk mail, yet another invitation to apply for a Visa card. Bay Bank, 9.9 percent. This was old, she thought.
    She picked up the envelope and was about to toss it into the wastebasket when she saw writing on the back. Jack’s writing. Another remember list:
Call Ely Falls Pharmacy, Call Alex, Bank deposit, March expenses, Call Larry Johnson re taxes, Call Finn re Caravan.
Finn, she remembered, was the Dodge-Plymouth dealer in Ely Falls. They had bought the Caravan four years ago and hadn’t, to her knowledge, had any dealings with Tommy Finn since.
    She turned the envelope around. At the other end of the blank side of the envelope was a note, also in Jack’s writing.
Muire 3:30
, it read.
    Who was Muire? Kathryn wondered. Randall Muir from the bank? Had Jack been negotiating a loan?
    Kathryn looked again at the front of the envelope. She checked the postmark. Definitely four years ago, she saw.
    She put the stack of papers back into the drawer and shoved the drawer closed with her foot.
    She was now longing to lie down. She left Jack’s office and walked into the spare room, her retreat. She lay back against the flowered spread, and within seconds she fell asleep.
    She was wakened by voices — a shouting voice, nearly hysterical, and another voice, calmer, as though trying to make itself heard over the commotion.
    Kathryn got up and opened the door, and the voices increased in volume. Mattie and Julia, she could hear, were downstairs in the front room.
    They were kneeling on the floor when Kathryn got there, Julia in a flannel nightgown, Mattie in a T-shirt and boxer shorts. Around them was a grotesque garden of wrapping paper — balls and crumpled clusters of red, gold, plaid, blue, and silver interspersed with what seemed to be thousands of yards of colored ribbon.
    Julia looked up from the doorway.
    “She woke up and came downstairs,” Julia explained. “She was trying to wrap her presents.”
    Mattie lowered herself to the floor and lay on the carpet in a fetal curl.
    Kathryn lay down next to her daughter.
    “I can’t stand it, Mom,” Mattie said. “Everywhere I look, he’s there. He’s in every room, in every chair, in the windows, in the wallpaper. I literally can’t stand it, Mom.”
    “You were trying to wrap his present?” Kathryn asked, smoothing her daughter’s hair out of her face.
    Mattie nodded and began to cry.
    “I’m going to take her to my place,” Julia said. “What time is it?”
    “Just after midnight. I’ll take her home and put her to bed,” Julia said.
    “I’ll come, too,” Kathryn said.
    “No,” Julia said. “You’re exhausted. You stay here and go back to bed. Mattie will be fine with me. She needs a change of scene, a neutral zone, a neutral bedroom.”
    And Kathryn thought how appropriate that image was, for she had the distinct sense they were involved in a war, that they were all in danger of becoming battle casualties.
    While Julia packed an overnight bag for Mattie, Kathryn lay down beside her daughter and rubbed her back. From time to time, Mattie shuddered convulsively. Kathryn sang a song she had made up when Mattie was a baby:
M is for Matigan
… , the song began.
    After Julia and Mattie had left, Kathryn climbed back up to her bedroom. This time, feeling braver, she crawled between the flannel sheets.
    She did not dream.

    In the morning, she heard a dog barking.
    There was something discordantly familiar about the dog barking.
    And then she braced herself, the way she might do if she were stopped at a light and happened to look up in the rear-view mirror to see that the driver behind her was going too fast.

    Robert’s hair was wet and freshly combed. She could see the comb lines near the widow’s peak. He had on a different shirt, a blue that was almost a denim, with a dark red tie. Second-day shirt, she