Free Red Clocks by Leni Zumas Page A

instructions battle it out in the girl: well-shaped brown eyes vs. sunken blue-gray ones, orderly teeth vs. huge and crooked, solid SAT scores vs. never took the SAT.
    When she got pregnant with Bex, at thirty, the wife felt as though she were sliding under a closing garage door.
    Why did “thirty” loom like an expirationdate?
    She and Didier hadn’t planned it; they weren’t married; they’d been dating for seven months. But the wife felt old. It was August, her last year of law school was about to start, the home pregnancy test made a cross.
This is what I want, this!
—law school was nothing to this.
    “She said I did steal,” says Bex, “and so she isn’t friends with me anymore.”
    “Give Shell some time to cool off.”

    “But what if she
never
cools off?”
    “I think she will,” says the wife. “Also, we need to talk about your research project! Have you decided on a topic yet?”
    A small smile. “It’s narrow to two.”
    “Oh, you narrowed it down?” The wife starts the ignition, flips her turn signal. Throat stab: she forgot to get any new books for Bex at the library.
    “Wood sprite or ghost pepper, the hottest pepperknown to man.”
    “Those are good choices, sweetpea.”
    “Shell’s mom has ghost pepper from India at their house. They have seventy-three different spices in their spice cabinet.”
    “Oh, they don’t have that many.”
    “Yes, they do—we counted. How many spices do
we
have, Momplee?”
    “No idea.”
    In the rearview, some cow is waving at her to get moving.
    The wife will take her sweet time.
    If she constructsa solid argument, he’ll be convinced.
    But then you’d actually have to go to counseling with him.
    Which might work!
    Which would be the whole point.
    To feel okay again. Even good.
    To stop her throat from hurting when Bex asks “Do you and Daddy love each other?”
    To stop reading online articles about the maladaptive coping mechanisms of kids from broken homes.
    To stop
brokenhomebrokenhomebrokenhome
from reeling in her head.
    To stop staring at the guardrails.

 
    I brought aboard with me a sack of
skerpikjøt,
which the Canadian sailors were interested to try. They called its taste “harrowing.” I explained that if the lamb is dried during an unusually wet or warm season, it may ferment to the point of decay.

THE BIOGRAPHER
    The biographer loves Penny at school, sharing snacks in the teachers’ lounge, but she loves her best on Sunday nights, when they watch Masterpiece mysteries in her little house with its rose-dotted wallpaper and stone fireplace and wool rugs, rain pattering on the oriel windows.
    Penny hands her a napkin, a fork, and a plate of shepherd’s pie. “Tap water or limeade?”
    “Limeade.But isn’t it time?”
    “Oh damn!” Penny hurries to the television. (She is always losing her clicker.) Settles with her own plate next to the biographer, tucks a napkin into the collar of her turquoise sweater. “Let’s see what skills you’ve got for us, Sergeant Hathaway.” The opening credits begin, theme song swelling over shots of Oxford’s dreaming spires, a weak English sun turning Cotswold limestonethe color of apricots. Penny intones, “Who will die tonight?”
    “You should write mysteries instead of bra rippers,” says the biographer.
    “But I prefer the beating heart. Did I tell you I’m going to a romance writers’ convention? They have agents you can pitch to.”
    “How much do they charge you for that privilege?”
    “Well, they charge plenty. And why shouldn’t they? The agents are being flownall the way from New York.”
    “Can I read your pitch?”
    “Honey, I have it memorized. ‘
Rapture on Black Sand
opens at the end of World War I. Euphrosyne Farrell is a young Irish nurse so gutted by her sweetheart’s death at the Somme that she emigrates to New York City. After becoming engaged to a middle-aged widower, she finds herself drawn to Renzo, the widower’s nephew, whose magnetic Neapolitaneyes