Free One More Day by Kelly Simmons Page B

best he could. To talk as much as he knew how.
    She had been the most talkative in college, hopped up on coffee before exams, unable to wind down, and John, who could fall asleep anywhere, anytime, struggling to stay awake to listen to her as she cuddled into his side in his narrow dorm bed. Nothing had changed.
    Carrie asked him what he wanted to do tomorrow, if he was taking the day off, and what would Ben want to do, what would Ben have missed most, and when John didn’t respond, she knew he’d fallen asleep. She glanced at the clock—eleven thirty. She lay on her back for a long time, eyes too wide for sleep. A faint buzzing from the wall near Ben’s room, a sound she always thought was electrical, related to the heating system. She wondered if it was something else.
    She slid away from John’s arm, got out of bed, took her pillow. She opened the linen closet quietly, grabbed a blanket. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d curled up on that alphabet rug, her head on C and her feet on T . She’d done that whenever Ben had been sick. When she worried the baby monitor wouldn’t be enough. That he could choke, gasp for air, and she wouldn’t hear it. If she went to him, she could drink in everything, every breath, every time he turned over. The small sound of his wet lips opening to the air, to gobble more life.
    She walked toward the opening of the door. Six inches, just as before. Just as she always left it, as if she’d measured it unconsciously with the width of her own hand.
    Inside, squinting in the path of the green night-light that wasn’t lighting up enough. Dark shapes, getting clearer. Then nothing. A flat plane. An empty crib.
    She ran to the light switch, flooding it, no dimmer.
    He was not in the crib. He was not in the room.
    She screamed a scream she didn’t think she was capable of anymore. She believed she’d used up her lung strength, damaged her organs. And then, suddenly, they regenerated.
    John’s feet in the hallway, Carrie on her knees in the room, too bright, too empty.
    His rush to the window, testing the lock. His instincts, not hers.
    Him throwing open the window and screaming into the night, “Where are you? Why are you fucking with us? Why?”
    Running downstairs, testing all the locks, his fist slamming the kitchen table, jostling the sugar and creamer, as he dialed Nolan’s number again.
    Carrie curled up on the rug, crying, but not blaming herself for leaving Ben’s room. No. She knew it wasn’t her fault, that it was all she deserved, all she would be given. Knew it all along. She’d made the wrong deal. She’d asked for the wrong thing. She’d made another mistake.

Tuesday

• • •
    Carrie usually listened to her gut. She’d feel a kind of electric tingle she knew to pay attention to. When her father had come back to visit her mother that one time, she’d known it was the last. When her dog had been killed by a car, she’d known from the look on the motorist’s face. And when she’d met John, she had known. Oh, how she had known. One buzzing brush of his hand against hers. And that was why she’d been so furious when Ben had been taken the first time: How had her radar failed her?
    She’d met John at a fund-raiser at State. Her roommate, Chelsea, had pointed out the primary advantage of helping out the athletic association: proximity to hot athletes . But Carrie wondered, after dating a self-professed nerd like Ethan, if an athlete would be the right choice.
    Carrie and Chelsea were given aprons and put in charge of grilling free hot dogs. They knew they’d be surrounded by boys. On some level, she knew before she even met John that she would. That he would be there.
    And there he was, standing in line with a friend. Brushing his long bangs out of his eyes with a flick of his head that she found irresistible. A navy-blue lacrosse T-shirt stretched across