Waking Kate Read Online Free Page B

jumped.
     

PART 1

     

1
    Atlanta, Georgia
Present day
    “Wake up, Kate!”
    And, exactly one year to the day that she fell asleep, Kate finally did.
    She opened her eyes slowly and saw that a pale lavender moth had come to a rest on the back of her hand. She watched it from her pillow, wondering if it was real. It reminded her of her husband Matt’s favorite T-shirt, which she’d hidden in a bag of sewing, unable to throw it away. It had a large faded moth on the front, the logo of a cover band out of Athens called the Mothballs.
    That T-shirt, that moth, always brought back a strange memory of when she was a child. She used to draw tattoos of butterflies on her arms with Magic Markers. She would give them names, talk to them, carefully fill in their colors when they started to fade. When the time came that they wanted to be set free, she would blow on them and they would come to life, peeling away from her skin and flying away.
    She’d always been a little different as a child, that strange girl who kept her imaginary friends well past the age of most children, the child people called a free spirit in a way meant to console her parents, as if, like a lisp, she would hopefully outgrow it. Her parents hadn’t minded, though. As long as they’d had each other, they’d let Kate be as free as she wanted.
    Kate thought about blowing on the lavender moth, to see what would happen, but before she could, her mother-in-law walked into her bedroom with a cup of coffee and a brisk, “Good morning!” When Kate looked again, the moth was gone. She sat up as Cricket threw open the curtains and said, “It’s the big day. The movers are coming.”
    Kate felt vaguely panicked, like she was shaking off a nightmare she couldn’t fully remember. “Movers?”
    Cricket snapped her fingers in front of Kate’s face as she handed Kate the cup of coffee. “Yes, movers. You’re moving into my house today. Did you take something to help you sleep last night?”
    She hadn’t dreamed this. It was real. She looked to the left side of the mattress. Matt wasn’t there. She could have sworn she’d heard his voice, heard someone’s voice. “No. I don’t take anything. You know that.”
    “You’re cranky this morning,” Cricket said. “It’s a good thing I got here early. I got Devin up and dressed and fixed her breakfast.”
    “Devin’s up? This is the first day of summer vacation,” Kate said. “She’s never up this early on vacation.”
    “I think it’s best to keep her on a schedule. It makes going back to school in the fall so much easier, don’t you think? She’s in the attic. You’ll keep an eye on her, won’t you?”
    Kate could feel a strange heat along the back of her neck, something she hadn’t felt in a while. It was almost exotic, like tasting turmeric or saffron after a year of eating pudding. There was a bite to it.
    She was annoyed.
    She was finally awake and annoyed. Of course she would keep an eye on Devin. For the past year she’d made Devin dinner and attended school plays and chaperoned field trips and taken her to the eye doctor. She’d been sleepwalking, but still, she’d done it. Cricket had no reason to distrust Kate’s ability to mother her own child.
    Except for that one time.
    There would always be that one time.
    “It’s such a mess up there,” Cricket said, clicking around the bedroom in her Louboutin shoes, her smart black suit, and big immovable southern hair. She checked the closet for leftover clothes, to make sure Kate had packed everything. “I thought I told you to go through the things in the attic and put what you wanted in the living room. Otherwise, it’s just going to be left behind for the new owners to deal with. It’s probably for the best not to let Devin take all those old clothes with her. We’ll never get her out of them in the fall. I found her school uniform in the trash can this morning!”
    Kate put the cup of coffee on the floor beside the bed. Every day