Away From Everywhere Read Online Free Page B

window, like she’d just made a genius comparison.“Sometimes it just rains.”She was stumbling now, obviously off course in her pre-planned speech.
    â€œWhat I am trying to say is that sometimes two people cannot ignore something bigger than themselves. When an affair is committed between two people in love, not just two people fooling around for the thrill of it, it’s a little different. She must have loved you to physically act on her feelings, Owen, and you loved her, right?”
    He shot her a quick look – wide eyes and an open mouth – that said, I do. Not did.
    â€œAnd that is why I am still talking to you. I know you’ve been wondering.”
    He picked a receipt up off the kitchen table and rolled it into a ball with two fingers. “I just. I can’t imagine being Alex today. It’s surreal. I just can’t. Most men might not have gone to the memorial service. I don’t think I would have. I just, I don’t think I could have looked at her knowing she … you know?” He avoided the description, still ashamed at his role in it all.“Alex has always been the noble sibling, I guess. I’ve just been his brother, the other son. And now the heartless bastard who ruined his life.” He let the balled-up receipt drop back down on the table. It bounced twice and fell to the floor. Lillian bent over to pick it up.
    â€œYou’re anything but heartless, Owen. It takes more than one mistake to be heartless.”
    â€œMy life has been a series of mistakes.”
    â€œIt’s only a mistake when it’s your fault,”she said, getting up from her chair. “Goodnight.”
    â€œThanks for trying.”
    He meant it.

    After Lillian had gone to sleep, Owen went into the living room with Hannah’s journal. When Lillian claimed the belongings from Hannah’s written-off car, on Alex’s behalf, her journal had been amongst the items in the bag. Owen went through the bag when Lillian had left the room. The journal wasn’t his to claim, but he justified it, knowing she might have written about him. About them. Alex didn’t need to hear about the affair, in detail, in his wife’s words. But Owen did.
    It was hard-covered. It was black, with a red spine, and had a sunburst orange stain on the lower left-hand corner that looked like a sea anemone. The surface was smooth and matted, indented with a long ago completed to-do list. She must have used her journal as a writing surface in bed one night. He ran his fingers over those indentations. He liked picturing her in bed, her purple pajamas loose and resting against her perfect body in a way that made her look vulnerable, desirable. On the inside cover she’d written her name, then scratched it out with a black sharpie marker. Hannah Collins . As if she was unsure, unsatisfied.
    He sprawled out on Lillian’s slippery, brown leather couch. He put a pillow on his chest to prop up her journal. It was the closest he could get to Hannah now, so he’d savour it, like each entry was a fifty-dollar bottle of wine that needed some occasion to be uncorked.
    He let the journal unfold in his lap and read a random excerpt: The final stage in the evolution of any relationship is the death of intimacy. You can love someone after that point, dearly, but just not the same way.
    He turned a few pages back, and read some more.
    â€¦and worse still is knowing that I could be beautiful, ravishing even, but it wouldn’t matter. It wouldn’t matter because the world is full of beautiful women. It wouldn’t matter because I know Alex wishes I was more of a professional woman, by his definition, and he seems, at least sometimes, to be embarrassed by me when he introduces me to his female friends, who are all doctors, lawyers, and other success stories. Women with televisions in their BMWs, and enough makeup in their purses to sink the Titanic, who travel just to say they’ve