Free Lone Star by Paullina Simons Page B

seemed to her that logic must prevail in a grown man’s head when he spied himself standing in the middle of the college where he had tenure, bawling because his teenage lover haddecided to move on. Not even move on, for Blake was the here and now, just . . . move sideways. Move back. Move away. How could the enormous common sense of that decision finally— finally! —not triumph over him?
    Chloe had been keeping an eye on the time—the thing she usually had least of, next to money—but after ninety minutes her eyes left the watch permanently to pitch silent poison darts in Hannah’s direction, hoping her friend would sense Chloe’s own despair at the tedium of spying on a stranger’s excessive distress. Come on, wrap the whole thing up, put it in a doggy bag, take it home. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go! Chloe kept silently shouting. LET’S GO!
    There was pacing, but there was no departing.
    A hundred and ten minutes. A movie now. First a tragedy, then a comedy, then a farce, now Shoah .
    Wait. Something new was happening. The stooped old man nodded. He let Hannah hug him, pat him.
    Unfounded optimism. There he was, crying again. He could barely stand on his grieving geriatric legs. Carefully Hannah helped him over to a bench, and sat down next to her soon-to-be-erstwhile lover, continuing to cajole and comfort him.

    The girls had a three-hour ride back home.
    â€œDid you see him?” Hannah asked.
    Oh, I saw him all right. Saw him, heard him, memorized him. I could play him by heart on the piano, that’s how well I’ve studied him. “Yes,” said Chloe.
    How could she tell Hannah about college?
    She couldn’t. And didn’t.
    She wanted to ask if Hannah loved Blake half as much. Would she shed a quarter of Martyn’s tears when it came time to say goodbye to the one she’d grown up with? Would she misshim an eighth as deeply? What was it called when it wasn’t pain, but a fraction of pain? Grimly Chloe closed her hands on the wheel.
    â€œWhat happens next, Chloe?”
    â€œI don’t know, Hannah. What happens next?” She wished someone would know the answer to this question, anyone. It was going to get dark soon. Her mother would be worried. Nothing to do but drive on. “Remember Darlene Duranceau?”
    â€œWho could ever forget her? Why would you bring her up, of all people?”
    Chloe shrugged. “I’m trying to make a point about what happens next.”
    After Darlene had died, Blake and Mason dismantled the woman’s overflowing garbage heap of a house in Denmark, Maine. She had been a hoarder, hoarding even herself in the end. She kept eating and sitting, eating and sitting, and soon she got so big that she couldn’t move off her couch, and she just kept eating and eating and eating, using the couch not just as a bed and a dining table, but also as a toilet, and, eventually, as a grave.
    It was winter when she died, and everyone had been snowed in for days. The local market couldn’t deliver Darlene’s groceries. When the roads were finally plowed, Barry the delivery boy brought Darlene her customary two boxes of Pringles and pretzels. Barry found her. Barry did not recover from this. He had been a shy clumsy kid in Chloe’s homeroom, but now he was on major meds, in therapy six days a week, and homeschooled by Social Services.
    The townies talked about nothing else for weeks. What was Darlene’s life like before she and the couch became one? What drama in her life had led her to the upholstered end? Was the end a consequence, an answer to a why? Or was it a catalyst? If everything you did led to everything else that would eventually happen, the question was, was Darlene Duranceau the beginning or the end?
    After the coroner pronounced her dead, and it was time toremove her from the premises, the EMT workers discovered that she was stuck. From lack of movement, she had developed