Free Mad River Road by Joy Fielding Page A

fearful. If she didn’t do something soon, they’d both go crazy. Mad River Road indeed.
    She drifted into a state that was half torpor, half sleep, fantasy mingling with reality as strange images, togetherwith actual events, began to flit in and around her consciousness. One minute she was frantically packing her bags and fleeing her home, the next minute she was diving into a turbulent stream. Familiar faces lined an unfamiliar shore, calling out to her in a variety of names, vying for her attention. They were throwing sticks and stomping their feet. Some were banging their fists against the heavy air, as if trying to beat down a door.
    Someone’s at the door, Emma realized as the banging grew louder. Who? she wondered, almost afraid to move. She wasn’t expecting anyone, and it wasn’t like any of her neighbors to just drop in uninvited. She hadn’t exactly solicited anyone’s friendship in the months since she’d taken up residence on Mad River Road, shunning the initial overtures of other single mothers on the street. It was better that way. No point in forming attachments, in getting involved in other people’s lives, when her own life was so tenuous and fraught, when a surprise phone call or an unexpected encounter could once again cause her to flee into the night. Was it really so surprising this attitude had filtered down to her son? His teacher, Ms. Kensit, regularly bemoaned Dylan’s lack of friends. Was it Ms. Kensit who was knocking on her door? Was she here to tell Emma something terrible had happened to her son? That someone had come to spirit him away?
    Emma bolted up in bed, trying to shake off the terror that was rapidly enveloping her, but it clung to her like a stubborn cold.
    Had he found them?
    She checked her watch as she pushed herself off the bed and into the upstairs hall. She’d been asleep almost half an hour. Was it possible that in that half hour, inthose thirty minutes when her defenses were down, her world had been once again, and forever, altered? All without her knowledge, and most certainly without her consent? “I do not agree to this,” she said as she inched her way down the stairs, her fingers pressing into the wall for support, leaving the sweaty imprint of her fear on the flat, white paint. “I do not accept this.” Taking a deep breath and holding it tightly in her lungs, Emma pulled open the front door and stared through the screen. I’ll kill you if I have to, she was thinking, staring at the uniformed stranger. I’ll kill you before I let you take my son away from me.
    “Parcel,” a young man with a wide space between his two front teeth announced nonchalantly. “It wouldn’t fit through the slot.” Emma pushed open the screen door as the man, whom Emma now realized was the postman, handed her a large stuffed envelope along with her regular mail, then turned on his heel and skipped down the front steps to the sidewalk. She quickly closed the door and tore open the padded envelope, pulling out what appeared to be a very long letter, neatly typed and double-spaced. From whom? she wondered, the cloak of fear returning to drape itself across her shoulders as she flipped to the final page. But instead of a signature, there were two words—THE END. “What’s going on here?” she asked, returning to the first page. The letter began:
    Dear Ms. Rogers
,
    Thank you so much for the opportunity to read your short story, “Last Woman Standing.” While we found the story to be entertaining and well written, we don’t think it is quite right for the readers of
Women’sOwn.
We wish you the best of luck in placing this piece with another magazine, and hope you will think of us in the future
.
    Sincerely …
    What the hell is this? Emma wondered, understanding in that moment that the postman had delivered the envelope to the wrong address. In fact, all the mail belonged to somebody else. To one Ms. Lily Rogers of 113 Mad River Road.
113
, not 131. Emma knew who Lily