Free Fear to Tread by Lucy Blue Page A

a thick cardigan sweater, another hand-me-down from Jake. She buried her face in the crook of her elbow and inhaled the scent—her own perfume and the ghost of Jake’s old cigarettes. Tears stung her eyes, and she wiped them away.
    She picked up the phone and dialed. Patti, her sister-in-law, answered on the second ring. “Hello?”
    “Hey, baby sis,” she said, keeping her tone light. “You were right on top of that.” She slumped back against the edge of the battered desk. “You expecting a call? Got a hot date?”
    “Not tonight,” Patti said, a smile in her voice. “I have a test in the morning, a make-up for—for one of the ones I missed.”  Jake’s mother and sister had flown north and spent his last four days at the hospital with him and Laura. It had been the first they had known he was sick. “You sound good.”
    “Yeah…I’ve been varnishing some stuff.” The last time she and Patti had talked, they had both been crying, and she had been drunk on sedatives and bourbon. “I wanted to tell you something.”
    “Please don’t apologize,” Patti said. “Mama was horrible to you, blaming you. We know Jake; we know it had to have been his idea not to tell us, just like he said it was.”
    “Patti--”
    “She was just so upset--”
    “Of course she was--”
    “She feels really bad about it now.” Laura slid down the desk as she listened until she was sitting on the floor, still holding the phone to her ear. “She wants to call you, but she’s scared of making it worse.” She concentrated on breathing without crying, holding her eyes open wide. “Laura? Are you there?”
    “Yeah, I’m here.” To her shock, she sounded fairly normal, maybe just a little congested. “She shouldn’t feel bad. She was right; I should have told y’all what was going on whether Jake wanted me to or not.”
    “I understand why you didn’t,” Patti said. “I think I understand.” Patti was studying elementary education and comparative religion at the University of Georgia. Her two great ambitions were to teach elementary school and marry her fiancé, a medical student. “You should come home for Christmas,” she said now. “You need to be with family, and we’re still your family. Jake wouldn’t want you to be all by yourself.”
    “I’ll think about it.” Christmas was only a few weeks away, she realized. She hadn’t thought about it before. The idea of going south and spending time in Jake’s mother’s house with the white artificial tree and all the teddy bears dressed like Ebenezer Scrooge was like a science fiction movie in her head, too weird to be real. “Patti, remember the other night when we were talking, and you told me I should pray to Jake?”
    “Yes.” In the silence, she could almost see her sister-in-law twisting a lock of blonde hair around her perfectly-manicured finger. “I know you think it’s silly.”
    “No, actually, I don’t.” The floor she was sitting on was cold as ice. The window was still open. “I did it, sort of. I wrote him some letters.” She closed her eyes for a moment and let a single teardrop fall. “I wanted to tell you that it really helped.”
    “Oh.” She sounded surprised and pleased and a little bit tearful herself. “I’m glad.”
    Laura smiled. “Okay…that was all I wanted.” A wave of love for Patti made her heart ache. “I’ll let you go.”
    “Laura, wait.” Another pause. “Did you feel him answer?”
    Her eyes widened in shock, and she had to take a deep breath. “Yeah…yeah, honey, I think I did.” For one crazy moment, she considered telling Patti about the ghost. But when she opened her mouth to do it, she realized she couldn’t.
    “I knew you would.” Patti wasn’t trying to hide her tears. “He loved you so much. I can’t believe he would just leave you.”
    Laura stifled an inappropriate snicker that caught her off guard. “He didn’t have a lot of choice.”
    “I don’t mean his body. I just…I know