Fic: Unexpected Discoveries, Everyday Miracles
Title: Unexpected Discoveries, Everyday Miracles
Author: afrakaday
Word Count: 1010
Rating: T
Summary: Claire receives unsettling news.
A/N: For the mary_mcdonnell MOL! Character is from the movie Grand Canyon.
Claire stopped by the mailbox on the way back to the house from her run, grabbing the stack and flipping through it as she walked up the short drive.
A bill, another bill, grocery store circular, something from Robbie’s school. Good Housekeeping magazine. A postcard from a boutique on Rodeo advertising an upcoming trunk show. A flyer of some sort: a white sheet of paper, folded into thirds. A notice from the dentist’s office, reminding her to schedule cleanings for Mack, Robbie, and herself. The evening edition of the Los Angeles Times.
She grabbed her key out of her shorts pocket and let herself into the house. After pouring a glass of water, she sat down at the kitchen island to open and sort through the mail she’d brought in.
Reaching for the folded flyer first, she took a sip. When she read the six words typed out onto the middle of the paper, she sputtered water all over it.
I SLEPT WITH YOUR HUSBAND.
SORRY.
With a trembling hand, Claire set the glass back down onto the counter, stashed the note inside Good Housekeeping in case anyone came home, and went back out to run some more.
* * *
She sobs tearlessly to herself as her feet carry her mechanically through her recently-trod path. A four and a half mile loop, meandering through commercial and residential areas but taking side streets and back alleys wherever possible to avoid traffic. In the twilight, no one she passes notices her distraught expression.
So she hadn’t been off base in her feeling that something was off-- with her, with Mack, with them.
With each step, her heart weighs heavier.
Roberto is growing up, leaving soon.
Mack is having an affair.
I’ll be all alone.
She barely notices when she arrives back at her empty house. She walks straight through to the patio, jumps into the pool without bothering to take off even her sneakers, sinks to the bottom, and screams.
* * *
Still, she’s not inclined to confront him about the anonymous note. She parses the words over and over until she can justify her chosen course of inaction. “I slept” - past tense. “Sorry” - remorse? And Mack, while distant, is still her husband; the same man she married almost twenty years ago, her college sweetheart. They’ve been through so much together. They are still a family, for what that’s worth. A gulf has grown between them, inexplicably, unsuspectingly, but she can acknowledge that she still loves him and probably always will.
So she tosses it into the trash, activates the compactor. Takes the trash out herself, a task usually reserved for Robbie. (He’s got to earn that allowance somehow.) Tries to forget about that typed letter, stark black letters on pure white paper.
* * *
Robbie’s taller than her now, she muses as she carefully folds jeans and shorts and tucks them into his trunk for camp. They’ve been sending him to sleepaway camp for years, but this year his impending absence pains her more than even the first time, almost eight years ago.
She doesn’t know what she’ll do without him around, to demand rides and pocket money and diffuse the tension between his parents.
In times like this she regrets that they let Robbie be an only child.
Realizing that Robbie’s not leaving for another week and her organizational efforts are likely premature, she closes the trunk with a thud and goes into the master suite to change into her running clothes. She needs to get out of the house.
* * *
She runs longer, now. It just happened, somehow, adding an extra block here or there until suddenly her afternoon jogs were taking seventy minutes instead of forty. There are things she should be doing; shopping, organizing, doing the wash. Writing to Robbie: letters that go off to camp and surely fall into a void, given the paucity of responses. She remembers treasured notes written in a childish hand, growing fewer with each passing summer.
Running clears her mind, slows the torrent of anxious thoughts to a manageable level. She doesn’t think about Mack while she runs. Whether he’s happy. Whom he might be fucking. The way he held her so tenderly just this morning before the sun rose, in those quiet moments between sleep and waking.
As she turns down a familiar alley, the homeless man who lives behind the dumpster jumps out, setting her momentarily off-balance. She’s not frightened by him, not after seeing him regularly on her jogging route. Though they’ve never spoken, he’s become less menacing, more familiar, over time. But seeing his face triggers a memory of a nightmare that caused her to wake up in a sweat in the middle of the night.
She reflects on it as her feet pound the pavement along the shoulder of the wide shaded boulevard. The dream has been recurring for weeks, or even months if she really makes herself think about it, which she doesn’t care to. Wandering through an airport terminal that turns out to lead to a train platform, ridiculous in her nightgown yet invisible to other people. Waving a tearful goodbye to her husband and son, who wear sympathetic smiles as they lurch from her view. The train speeding off, leaving her alone on a deserted platform. The scene suddenly shifting to a long white corridor with harsh circular fluorescent lights overhead, institutional and counterintuitively devoid of doors. A baby’s cry, plaintive and needy.
A baby’s cry? She stopped moving, straining to hear over the low din of traffic.
Is her dream coming back to her again, a subconscious aural memory? Or was that actually...
The insistent wailing continued, just off the side of the road.
With bated breath and a shimmer of hope pushing aside the rock of resignation deep within her chest, she parted the leaves and moved tentatively into the brush. The moment her eyes came to rest upon the infant, she was suddenly and unshakably seized with the sense that this baby needed her as much as she needed it.
Author: afrakaday
Word Count: 1010
Rating: T
Summary: Claire receives unsettling news.
A/N: For the mary_mcdonnell MOL! Character is from the movie Grand Canyon.
Claire stopped by the mailbox on the way back to the house from her run, grabbing the stack and flipping through it as she walked up the short drive.
A bill, another bill, grocery store circular, something from Robbie’s school. Good Housekeeping magazine. A postcard from a boutique on Rodeo advertising an upcoming trunk show. A flyer of some sort: a white sheet of paper, folded into thirds. A notice from the dentist’s office, reminding her to schedule cleanings for Mack, Robbie, and herself. The evening edition of the Los Angeles Times.
She grabbed her key out of her shorts pocket and let herself into the house. After pouring a glass of water, she sat down at the kitchen island to open and sort through the mail she’d brought in.
Reaching for the folded flyer first, she took a sip. When she read the six words typed out onto the middle of the paper, she sputtered water all over it.
I SLEPT WITH YOUR HUSBAND.
SORRY.
With a trembling hand, Claire set the glass back down onto the counter, stashed the note inside Good Housekeeping in case anyone came home, and went back out to run some more.
* * *
She sobs tearlessly to herself as her feet carry her mechanically through her recently-trod path. A four and a half mile loop, meandering through commercial and residential areas but taking side streets and back alleys wherever possible to avoid traffic. In the twilight, no one she passes notices her distraught expression.
So she hadn’t been off base in her feeling that something was off-- with her, with Mack, with them.
With each step, her heart weighs heavier.
Roberto is growing up, leaving soon.
Mack is having an affair.
I’ll be all alone.
She barely notices when she arrives back at her empty house. She walks straight through to the patio, jumps into the pool without bothering to take off even her sneakers, sinks to the bottom, and screams.
* * *
Still, she’s not inclined to confront him about the anonymous note. She parses the words over and over until she can justify her chosen course of inaction. “I slept” - past tense. “Sorry” - remorse? And Mack, while distant, is still her husband; the same man she married almost twenty years ago, her college sweetheart. They’ve been through so much together. They are still a family, for what that’s worth. A gulf has grown between them, inexplicably, unsuspectingly, but she can acknowledge that she still loves him and probably always will.
So she tosses it into the trash, activates the compactor. Takes the trash out herself, a task usually reserved for Robbie. (He’s got to earn that allowance somehow.) Tries to forget about that typed letter, stark black letters on pure white paper.
* * *
Robbie’s taller than her now, she muses as she carefully folds jeans and shorts and tucks them into his trunk for camp. They’ve been sending him to sleepaway camp for years, but this year his impending absence pains her more than even the first time, almost eight years ago.
She doesn’t know what she’ll do without him around, to demand rides and pocket money and diffuse the tension between his parents.
In times like this she regrets that they let Robbie be an only child.
Realizing that Robbie’s not leaving for another week and her organizational efforts are likely premature, she closes the trunk with a thud and goes into the master suite to change into her running clothes. She needs to get out of the house.
* * *
She runs longer, now. It just happened, somehow, adding an extra block here or there until suddenly her afternoon jogs were taking seventy minutes instead of forty. There are things she should be doing; shopping, organizing, doing the wash. Writing to Robbie: letters that go off to camp and surely fall into a void, given the paucity of responses. She remembers treasured notes written in a childish hand, growing fewer with each passing summer.
Running clears her mind, slows the torrent of anxious thoughts to a manageable level. She doesn’t think about Mack while she runs. Whether he’s happy. Whom he might be fucking. The way he held her so tenderly just this morning before the sun rose, in those quiet moments between sleep and waking.
As she turns down a familiar alley, the homeless man who lives behind the dumpster jumps out, setting her momentarily off-balance. She’s not frightened by him, not after seeing him regularly on her jogging route. Though they’ve never spoken, he’s become less menacing, more familiar, over time. But seeing his face triggers a memory of a nightmare that caused her to wake up in a sweat in the middle of the night.
She reflects on it as her feet pound the pavement along the shoulder of the wide shaded boulevard. The dream has been recurring for weeks, or even months if she really makes herself think about it, which she doesn’t care to. Wandering through an airport terminal that turns out to lead to a train platform, ridiculous in her nightgown yet invisible to other people. Waving a tearful goodbye to her husband and son, who wear sympathetic smiles as they lurch from her view. The train speeding off, leaving her alone on a deserted platform. The scene suddenly shifting to a long white corridor with harsh circular fluorescent lights overhead, institutional and counterintuitively devoid of doors. A baby’s cry, plaintive and needy.
A baby’s cry? She stopped moving, straining to hear over the low din of traffic.
Is her dream coming back to her again, a subconscious aural memory? Or was that actually...
The insistent wailing continued, just off the side of the road.
With bated breath and a shimmer of hope pushing aside the rock of resignation deep within her chest, she parted the leaves and moved tentatively into the brush. The moment her eyes came to rest upon the infant, she was suddenly and unshakably seized with the sense that this baby needed her as much as she needed it.