Midnight Haul Read Online Free Page A

room. I live here, you know.”
    “I didn’t know.”
    “Since the divorce, I live here. I’m not surprised Mary Beth didn’t tell you about it, because it’s all a little bit of a downer. And talking with you on the phone once a week, well, it was something she looked forward to. She didn’t want to talk about depressing stuff, I’m sure.”
    “Depressing stuff. Just how depressed
was
she, Laurie? She never gave me any indication…”
    “Like I said, your phone calls were a bright spot in her week. She didn’t want to spoil ’em, I guess.”
    For a while Laurie sat silently and so did Crane; her hands felt cold around his.
    “What happened, Laurie?” he asked her.
    She looked at him with a face that was much too much like Mary Beth’s and said, “I haven’t the faintest idea.”
    “Laurie, Mary Beth wasn’t depressed one day in the two years I knew her.”
    “She wasn’t all that depressed this summer, either. Just kind of blue.”
    “Kind of blue.”
    “Worse, I guess, the last week or so.”
    “What happened the last week?”
    “Crane, I was close to my sister, growing up. But we didn’t talk much this summer. Something was bothering her, that much I know. What it was, exactly, I
don’t
know.”
    “It had to be
something
…”
    “Maybe you didn’t know her as well as you thought. Never depressed a day while you knew her, huh? Well, a week after she got home I found her up in the middle of the night, sitting in the bathroom, bawling.”
    “What about?”
    “I don’t know. Her period, maybe, who can know? Only it was more often than that… I found her bawling like that four or five times.”
    “And she never said what was troubling her?”
    “Once she admitted to me that she was thinking about Dad. He died of cancer about three years ago, you know. They were close. Being in this house reminded her of him, and that got to her.”
    “Got to her enough to make her do what she did, Laurie?”
    “Who can say?”
    “You mean you can understand it? You can understand somebody going into a bathroom and… and…”
    “Slashing their wrists? I don’t understand it, exactly. But I can see it. Haven’t you ever thought about killing yourself, Crane? Hasn’t everybody?”
    “Maybe everybody else has.
I
haven’t. It’s a fucking waste, Laurie! It’s the biggest fucking waste I can imagine.”
    “Why? Because life is so wonderful? What’s wonderful about it?”
    He pulled his hand away from hers. He didn’t like what he was hearing coming out of this face that was so much like Mary Beth’s. He didn’t like the sickness that Laurie seemed to have, in a small way, that Mary Beth must’ve had in a larger way.
    She must’ve sensed it, because she seemed to soften, reaching out and touching his shoulder as she said, “She loved you, Crane. I know she did. You were the most important thing in her life.”
    “A life that meant so little to her she flushed it down the goddamn toilet.”
    He stared at the wall. Laurie wasn’t saying anything. When he looked over at her, she was crying into her hands.
    “Laurie,” he said, putting an arm around her, “it’s been rough on you, too. I know that.”
    “I… I do know one thing that depressed her.”
    “Yes?”
    “Brucie.”
    “Brucie?”
    “Brucie. My little Brucie. She was unhappy for him.”
    He didn’t understand that. He let it pass.
    “Laurie, who found her?”
    “Mom. In the morning. Mom came and got me up. Mary Beth had been gone for hours by the time we found her.”
    “Can I see where it was?”
    “Sure,” she said, shrugging.
    She led him there.
    He hesitated a moment.
    Then he looked in and saw a bathroom, shining clean, guest towels hanging.
    “I don’t know what I expected,” he said.
    “I know,” Laurie said. “It should be more dramatic than just a bathroom. But it’s just a bathroom. It’s the only one in the house, too, so both Mom and I were forced to use it, and that helped us, in a weird way. It helped