The Accidental Book Club Read Online Free Page A

I’ll write down my apartment address for you. And I’ll let you know where we decide to put Laura.”
    “Put Laura,” Jean said, realizing she was only repeating again. It was just that she felt so very knocked down by this news, so very confused and unsure of how things could have gotten this out of control without her even knowing about it. “Like a dog needing a home.” The words were out of her mouth, sounding sharp in the hallway, before she’d barely formed the thought in her head.
    He held out a hand. “I didn’t mean it like . . . I just meant I’d let you know what rehab she’d be staying in. This is hard, Jean. I want you to know that. This isn’t easy for me at all. I love . . .” He paused, swallowed, his eyes suddenly looking very bloodshot and swimmy. “I love them both. But I can’t say I love my family, because for the longest time I’ve had no family. Maybe it’s my fault too—I don’t know.”
    “Well, she had a reason to drink, I would imagine,” Jean said, trying to offer sympathy, but also hoping for an explanation. She realized her words might have come off as blame, and maybe that was what she was looking for. If Curt had done something to cause this, then maybe she hadn’t done it. “Something must have been wrong.”
    He looked up at her sharply, and though she didn’t know Curt well enough to guess what anger looked like on him, she thought maybe that was what she was seeing in the pinched creases on his temples. She pulled herself up taller, scrunched her purse tighter into her stomach, and lifted her chin. She certainly didn’t feel as strong as she used to be, but she wasn’t one to back down when cornered, either.
    “There was a lot wrong,” Curt answered. “But if you’re asking if I did something to her, like cheat on her or hurt her in some way, the answer is no. I’ve been devoted to her. Longer than most men would be. Longer than she’s been devoted to me.”
    “I wasn’t asking that,” Jean said, though, of course, she had been.
    “Most of what was wrong was she was so married to her job and her booze and her projects, she didn’t have time to be married to me,” he said. He stared at his shoes for a moment, then suddenly stood up straight and gestured toward the room, stepping aside. “You might as well go in. But don’t expect to have a conversation with her or anything. Already tried. Didn’t go well.”
    Jean took a couple of steps forward, suddenly feeling very sorry for her son-in-law with his stooped shoulders and the way his pants seemed to hang on his hips as if he’d recently lost a significant amount of weight. Sadness and regret seemed to envelop him. She couldn’t help but call to mind his and Laura’s wedding day, the way he followed Laura around, skimming her lower back with his fingertips or clutching her hand like a dazed child, laughing at all her jokes, brushing his knuckles along her chin adoringly. He was so utterly bulldozed by Laura, Jean was sure if she looked closely, she’d see hearts in his eyes. He might have followed the girl anywhere; he just must have never expected to have to follow her here.
    Jean put her hand on his arm, very lightly. “I’m sorry,” she said, though she wasn’t sure if she was simply expressing sympathy, or if maybe she was apologizing too.
    The curtains in Laura’s room were pulled shut—surely to ward off the immense hangover that she would be likely to wake up with—and the room was dim, gray. From the doorway, Jean barely recognized the form in the bed as her daughter. She, like Curt, had also lost weight—a lot of it, from the look of things. She was skeletal. But as Jean stepped closer to the bed, she could see that her daughter’s face had a certain puffy, doughy quality to it, as if she were a Christmas roll ready to be popped into the oven. She was strapped to a monitor, which, from what Jean could tell, the hospital put everyone on, whether they were there for a heart