The Law of Bound Hearts Read Online Free Page A

his voice when he asked how she was doing, the timbre hushed, like the tone you’d use at a concert or in church. Or the way he studied her when he thought she didn’t notice, averting his eyes when she caught him. It made her want to scream, just hurl words across the room at him. What the hell are you staring at? You want to know how I’m doing? Well, why don’t you just get up and pull a blood sample, check my urine? Sometimes the words nearly escaped, but she managed to hold them back. Richard didn’t understand that caring too much could be a fault, could feel smothering.
    The thought of his concern closed in and Libby wanted to bolt. She scrawled a quick note and pinned it to the message board, knowing he would be hurt when he saw it. Once that would have stopped her, but now she gathered her shoulder bag, car keys, jacket. She was nearly through the door when the phone rang. Although she had been waiting for a call, hoping for it, now she was unprepared. She let it ring again and again as she steeled herself to lift the receiver. The words she had carefully rehearsed faded. Her mouth turned dry, ashy, and she had to swallow twice before she managed a simple hello.
    â€œHey, Mrs. Barnett.” Her heartbeat calmed, returned to its normal rhythm. It was not Sam. “It’s Patrick. Patrick Cooper.” Patrick the Prick, she thought. “I’ve been trying to reach Matt. Leaving messages at his dorm. I was wondering if he’s coming home this weekend.”
    She made her voice careful, neutral. “I don’t think so, Patrick. As far as I know he doesn’t plan on flying back until Thanksgiving.”
    She checked the clock. Ten to. “I’ll tell him you called,” she said before she hung up, although she wouldn’t. She didn’t like Patrick. She could never see him without remembering the afternoon years before. She hadn’t meant to eavesdrop, but her bedroom door had been ajar and the boys’ voices reverberated, vibrant with testosterone. (Honestly, sometimes she thought a girl could get pregnant just walking by a teenage male.) “So where’s your mother?” Patrick had asked. “Off with the other hockey sticks?” “What?” Matt said. “You know, the hockey sticks. My mother and the others. I mean, isn’t that what they look like? Skinny as sticks and dressed all in beige.” Libby waited for Matt to say something—defend her—but he laughed. “The hockey sticks,” he said. “That’s a hoot.”
    She had wanted to march down the stairs and slap Patrick, slap Matthew, too. Would they be happier if mothers all went around letting themselves go? Getting fat? They didn’t have any idea how hard it was. Pilates. Yoga. Jogging. Free weights. And the
vigilance.
Training yourself to eat half what you’d ordered, watching every mouthful you swallowed, not even remembering the last time you had a piece of chocolate. Counting calories or grams of fat, or points, depending on which weight-loss system you were using at the moment. Did that little prick think it was fun to spend most of the time hungry while you lived with the tyranny of the scale and mirror? In that she had been luckier than most, a size 8 her entire adult life, just as she had been in high school. A perfect 8, according to saleswomen, as if perfection could be found in a dress size. No breast reduction for her like Suzanne Mason, or lipo’ed stomach like June Duncan, who maintained you could do sit-ups from now to the next millennium but it wouldn’t repair the damage of having kids. Well, Patrick would be happy now. With her puffy face and swollen legs, she looked like anything but a hockey stick. A marshmallow was the more apt simile.
    She heard Richard’s car pull into the drive. Too late for an easy escape.
    He came in, closed the kitchen door quietly behind him, as if the least noise might trip an alarm. He