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, she thought, and then froze. Two voices, soft, bantering. Something not right .
    She stood outside the door, clutching the damp grocery bag, her fingers numb. This made no sense , she thought, it was crazy. Like the bat’s jaws, moving in silent exclamation .
    She felt cold moving down her arms, as though she was shrinking, the ice in her stomach, escalating.
    There was something she was missing, something on the edge of her understanding. Probably nothing, her mind countered, and then it was as if her feelings and her mind entwined in an intense flash of unconscious dialogue.
    No, not nothing. Say it.
    I know the voice.
    Still that means nothing.
    Nothing or everything .
    The longer she waited, she knew, the worse it would get. About this, her mind and body agreed. So she opened the door, stepped inside, and felt as if she had been knifed in the stomach.
    At the end of the galley kitchen, Althea could see someone sitting on Kevin’s kitchen counter, barely visible in the doorframe. A woman’s tanned limbs, a gold watch, arms around Kevin’s neck, and legs around his waist. Kevin was leaning into her. Tori .
    Althea stood stunned at the door. They hadn’t heard her come in. A lump lodged in her throat, growing until she could barely breathe. She wanted to scream, couldn’t. Her body felt as if it had been dropped into a pot of boiling oil. Then something like shock set in and she watched with detached fascination, as if she had left her body and was watching someone else. Couldn’t be real .
    The back of Kevin’s head was visible and his mouth was on what Althea knew was Tori’s throat. His arms were moving, and though Althea could not see his hands, she knew they were under Tori’s shirt. She saw his right arm move down to an area between Tori’s knees and as the muscles in his arms flexed, Tori’s legs tensed and Althea could hear her groan.
    Kevin was pressing into Tori in such a familiar way, Althea could imagine what it felt like, his hands gentle and firm, his cock hard, how his mouth felt. Shit, they had even done it at their kitchen counter before .
    As she watched them, she felt what Tori was feeling, Kevin’s mouth, his clean laundry scent, and she was mesmerized, couldn’t take her eyes off them.
    Pain bubbled up inside her, her throat tightening as if she had swallowed molten rock, and because she didn’t know what else to do, she dropped the grocery bags. The wine bottle made a piercing shriek as it shattered, fused with the screams of her heart.

    • • •

    A HALF-HOUR LATER, she was on the 401 Highway heading west toward Toronto, shaking, numb. Her throat was raw and swollen, she could barely speak. Kevin had wanted to come with her. She had to get out of there. During their brief exchange, Tori had been doubled over on the couch, sobbing. Althea couldn’t even look at her.
    Althea’s eyes were glazed and her hands felt cemented to the steering wheel. She opened her window. It was cooler now that the rain was over, and she needed to feel the air moving. Cry later, just get home . Traffic slowed. A policeman waved her into the right lane. Ahead of her, a wisp of black smoke rose from within a crumpled mini-van. She pulled off the highway, following a detour.
    She felt hot, her face suffused and blotchy. In her head, a dull pain grew. Her mouth filled with saliva. She stopped and threw up on the shoulder of the road. Traffic was thinning. Driving again, she tried to focus on
    the two of them in the kitchen, her two best friends
    what she could see of the road
    what she couldn’t see behind the counter
    the road
    Kevin’s fingers inside Tori, whispering
    not now
    when were they going to tell her
    That was what last weekend was all about, that was Tori’s tiredness, her sadness. And I’ve been worried about her, well fuck them their bodies intertwined and as much as she wanted it to stop, she couldn’t let go of the image of Tori’s brown legs wrapped around Kevin, coaxing him. Not