The glasses had scratched left lens that Walter had kept meaning to get fixed. She turned them over in her hands, the way she'd turned the car keys over in her hands that first week, when driving somewhere felt like lying. The clock on the wall was the kind that ticked. Outside, a neighbor's dog barked twice and then the afternoon went back to what it was.
The MP3 player was silver and smaller than her thumb, with a single orange button she didn't press. Her daughter had written the titles on a Post-it in green marker and stuck it to the player's back - but Margaret turned it face-down the first afternoon. The second day she moved it six inches to make room for her coffee cup, and then moved it back. It sat next to Walter's glasses like something else that needed fixing.
The voice that came through the earbuds was flat in a way she couldn't name, like someone reading a grocery list to a jury. She made it to the part where the detective finds the body before she took the left earbud out, then the right. The player went face-down next to the glasses. She picked up the glasses. Outside, the dog had nothing to say either.
The Eleven-Minute Narrator
The Scottish woman's voice came through the left earbud and the right one too - because Margaret had forgotten to take them out before she turned the faucet on. The lighthouse keeper's wife had lost a boot in the mud, and Margaret was watching the soap drain in slow circles while the woman described the specific cold of wet wool against an ankle. The dishes were done before Margaret knew the dishes were done. She stood with her hands under the running water, not cold yet, watching the window above the sink where a pigeon had landed on the sill and then left, and she didn't turn the water off until the lighthouse keeper's wife said the name of the boot's owner for the first time - a name that turned out to be her own daughter's name, or close enough. The faucet knob was cold when she finally touched it.
The hydrangeas along the fence needed cutting back, had needed it since August, and she put her hand on one of the dried heads and it came apart in her palm like something that had been waiting for permission. The Scottish woman was in the middle of a sentence about a kettle. Margaret stood at the fence with a fistful of dead petals and the shadow of the neighbor's oak already reaching the birdbath, which meant the afternoon was almost gone - which meant she'd been out here longer than she'd thought, and she didn't know exactly how long, only that the tight thing in her chest had unclenched itself somewhere between the rosemary bush and the second loop around the garden chair. She opened her hand and the petals went wherever petals go. The kettle, the Scottish woman said, had begun to scream.
The reading glasses were still on the table - left lens down, and beside them the silver player with the Post-it worn soft at the corners from being turned over and turned back. Her daughter picked up the glasses and set them down again. Margaret was already in her coat, the good one with the deep pockets, one hand inside where the player was, the orange button under her thumb. The door was open and the afternoon light came in flat and yellow across the floor. She left before her daughter thought to ask where she was going.
The Fence at 4:30
She had listened to the whole second book before she noticed the soup on the stove had gone from simmering to something else - a low hiss and a smell like scorched bay leaf, and she turned the burner off and stood there with the wooden spoon and the Scottish woman was describing a letter written in bad light and Margaret was thinking about a letter, a specific one, in a drawer she hadn't opened, and then she wasn't thinking about it anymore because the lighthouse keeper's wife had found something under a floorboard that changed the whole shape of everything that had come before. The scorched soup went into the sink. She washed the pot with one earbud in and one out - the way she'd started doing things, half here and half somewhere off the coast of a country she'd never visited, and it occurred to her, the pot still in her hands, that she hadn't heard the clock in the kitchen tick since sometime last Tuesday.
Her daughter called on a Thursday and Margaret answered from the bottom of the garden - the player paused mid-sentence, and when her daughter asked how she was sleeping Margaret said *fine* and looked at the birdbath, which had gone green along the rim, and she meant it, which was new. The spare earbud - the one she kept on the windowsill for when the other needed untangling, had left a small white ring on the paint that she noticed and didn't wipe away. She had started keeping the player in the good coat's pocket even when she wasn't wearing the coat, the way she had once kept Walter's watch wound even after. On Friday she went back to the beginning of the first book, the Scottish woman's voice, the lighthouse - the boot in the mud, because she wanted to hear it again from the start now that she knew how it ended, and she stood in the kitchen in the dark for a long time after, coat on, hands in her pockets - not going anywhere, the orange button warm under her thumb.
The library had a return slot in the door and a smell like carpet and somewhere a photocopier, and Margaret stood at the desk with the Post-it in her hand, the green marker faded now, and asked the woman behind the desk whether they had anything else by the same person - the one who wrote the lighthouse book, and she couldn't remember the author's name but she described the voice instead, the specific way it went when something was about to happen, and the librarian looked at her for a moment and then said *oh, her* the way you say the name of someone you already know. Margaret went home with three CDs in a plastic case and stood in the kitchen unwrapping the cellophane with her thumbnail - and the clock on the wall ticked twice while she did it, and then the Scottish woman's voice filled the room again and the clock went quiet the way rooms do when something more interesting is happening. The three cases went on the counter next to the good coat. She didn't call her daughter back until Sunday.
Disclaimer
This article is for general informational purposes only and doesn't constitute professional, financial, medical, or legal advice. Consult a qualified professional about your specific situation.
