Threshold Read Online Free Page B

and the thunderstorms had blown themselves away east, left the city wet and gray, and Chance was trying to concentrate on a stack of notes for her thesis, envelope of black-and-white photographs of the flat and dimpled skulls of primitive amphibians and fish with fingers, anything but Deacon Silvey and her screwed-up life, when the phone rang and it was Elise. A bad connection from the weather and that brittle, hesitant sound in her voice that said she’d been crying and might start again at the drop of a hat.
    “It’s my fault, isn’t it?” she asked, and “No,” Chance said, trying hard to sound like she was absolutely certain she meant what she was saying.
    “Yes it is. I know it is. How can you even pretend that it isn’t? If I hadn’t—”
    “Deke’s a fucking drunk, and I can’t deal with it anymore. That’s all the reason I needed.”
    “You had that much reason from the start, Chance. He was a drunk when you met him.”
    “So I’m a slow learner. I’m a masochist. Rub it in, why don’t you.”
    Elise sighed, and “You wouldn’t have ever left him over that,” she said. “Not if I hadn’t slept with him.”
    “If you say so. Fine. But I need to go now. I have work to do.”
    A long pause, and Chance stared at her notes and photographs, listened impatiently to the static and silence as Elise scraped up the courage to finish what she’d begun.
    “Chance, what happened to us in the water works tunnel that night? I’ve been trying to remember, trying to be sure that what I do remember is what really did happen . . . but it’s all so blurry now, it’s all so . . .” and she trailed off, then, running out of words or resolve. Chance kept her eyes on the photos, the incontestable reality of her fossils, the comfort of tangible things, and when she finally replied, she used words that were just as safe, just as black and white.
    “You can’t remember what happened because you were stoned. Hell, Elise, I don’t know. We got turned around in there somehow. We got scared and confused and lost track of the time. It was dark. But mostly, we were stoned.”
    “That’s what Deacon kept telling me,” Elise said, almost whispering. “He doesn’t want to talk about it, either.”
    “I didn’t say I didn’t want to talk about it.”
    “But you don’t, do you? It frightens you just to think about it.”
    “Why the fuck do you bother asking me questions if you already know all the answers?”
    “I know it’s my fault. I know. ”
    Chance glanced across the room at the clock beside her bed, the anger too close to the surface now, and she knew if she didn’t get off the phone very soon she’d end up telling Elise all the things she actually did blame her for.
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve got an important meeting with my major professor early in the morning. I’ll call you tomorrow, I promise,” and “Forgive me,” Elise whispered, and she hung up first, before Chance could say anything else.
     
    It rained the day they buried Elise, picture-perfect funeral for a girl who swallowed a whole month’s worth of Pamelor all at once, then slashed her arms from wrist to elbow, who died alone in an overflowing tub of bloodcold water in a motel that rented rooms to hookers and crack dealers, pay in cash by the hour, and Elise had paid them for a whole night.
    “You take just as long as you have to,” her grandfather said, one hand resting on her shoulder, gesture they both knew couldn’t comfort, and he gave Chance his big bat-black umbrella before following the others back to their cars; but wrong that she should be dry and Elise in the wet ground, so she let it fall from her hand as soon as her grandfather was out of sight, and the wind snatched the umbrella away, sent it bouncing and rolling off down the hill until it snagged in the lee of a towering granite angel. And Chance sat with her while the late April rain needled Oak Hill Cemetery, persistent drizzle to scrub the old and