Night, Forgotten

Original Edition - Chapter 10: Then

I moved as quickly as I could in the darkness, stepping clumsily in my winter boots over twigs and clumps of snow in our backyard. My damp hair turned to ice at the tips where it escaped from beneath my knit hat.

As I entered the woods between our house and the Dolans', something sharp poked into my side, just below my bottom rib. It was the heel on one of the pumps I'd put in my purse before leaving the house.

Without stopping, I shifted my weight to adjust the position of the offending shoe. The effort threw me off balance and I stumbled, but caught myself before falling onto the dead leaves. Continuing at a more careful pace, I soon emerged from the woods and onto the Dolans' back lawn.

As I approached their contemporary, glass-paned house, I could just make out the scene beyond the illuminated windows of the family room. A clump of men held cans of beer and bopped their heads self-consciously to the faint strains of "All I Want for Christmas," which seeped through the sealed, floor-to-ceiling sliding doors into the night outside. Marcus was among them.

Liza bent and spun in the middle of the floor, being silly but graceful as always. Showing off. The only other face I recognized through the window was that of Eddie, who still lived in his and Marcus's parents' house down the street. Eddie's eyes, like almost everyone else's, were on Liza's twirling body.

Liza was mid-pirouette when she spotted me through the sliding doors that opened onto their deck. "Julie!" She shrieked, jumping out of the spin and prancing over in her stockinged feet. She made an unnecessarily dramatic effort to drag open the slider. "Come in, come in!" A din of music and voices poured out into the night. "Take off your boots!"

I obeyed and started to remove my pumps from my purse, but she batted them from my hands. "Don't worry about putting on shoes. Come dance!" she commanded, bounding back into the family room and trying to take me with her.

"Let me get a drink first!" I chuckled, holding up my hands to stop our trajectory.

Liza caught my bandaged hand in front of her face. She gripped my wrist. "What happened to you?"

"I cut my hand on one of these earrings, actually," I answered, allowing her to examine first the bandage and then the little gold birds attached to my earlobes.

"Well, they're pretty cute." Liza touched the edge of my left ear, giving me a chill. "Pain is beauty, right?" She hadn't even asked about Owen; maybe she didn't want to embarrass me by bringing up his absence.

I'd been at the party for five minutes and my skin was already starting to prickle with the sense that I was being watched. People were probably wondering why I was there alone and assuming there was something wrong with my marriage or with me in general.

The only thing more frustrating than the anxiety expanding in my chest was its familiarity. And it was difficult to calm my nerves without Owen beside me, breathing with me. In together, and out together.

A glass of wine would help.

Liza sloshed around the remnants of liquor in her glass and seemed to read my mind. "Let's open a bottle of wine."

"I can bring you ladies something from the bar, if you want," a deep voice intruded.

I looked up at a burly man I'd never seen before. His pockmarked face bent and cracked in all the wrong places as he grimaced in my direction. It was only by the tone of his voice that I surmised he was smiling.

"Want me to bring you a Cosmopolitan or something?" He wiggled his eyebrows. "A scotch on the rocks, perhaps?"

"No, thanks," I replied, trying to make my voice sound pleasant.