Kimberly Stuart by Act Two: A Novel in Perfect Pitch Page B

arm out of the cocoon in order to feel around on the bedside table for the alarm clock. My hand knocked off a tumbler of water. I cursed and pulled my entire upper body out of the covers. My lungs hurt, the air was so cold. The room was still dark, but the clock read seven-thirty. I groaned and pulled the covers back over my head. I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I remembered was a knock on the door at the foot of the stairs.
    â€œSadie?” Jayne said timidly when she’d opened the door a crack.
    â€œHmmm?” I said, forcing my eyelids open.
    â€œI’m going into town pretty soon if you’d like to catch a ride to campus. Didn’t you say you wanted to stop by the music building sometime today?”
    â€œYes,” I whispered and then cleared my throat to say it more loudly. “I need an hour.”
    â€œAn hour?” she asked. “Right. Okay. I’ll just do some more laundry and get a meal in the Crock-Pot. Emmy will help.” I could hear the baby babbling. “Emmy’s coming, too, aren’t you, sweetie?”
    All right, I thought. No baby talk before coffee.
    She shut the door and I willed my feet onto the cold floor. Frost lined the inside of the attic windows. I whimpered on my way to the bathroom and immediately turned on the shower to scalding. I stood in front of the mirror and waited for it to fog up before getting wet. The bags under my eyes had grown overnight. So much for fresh air being the victor in the fight against aging. I growled at my reflection, sneering at the idiot who had agreed to move out to the freezing little house on the forsaken prairie.

    Because some sense of mercy still remained in the world, Jayne did not drive a truck. She drove the equally alien but more physically accessible minivan. I shuffled down the walk as quickly as my Ferragamos would take me and slammed the door against the cold and the stench.
    â€œDo you get used to that smell?” I asked Jayne through my scarf. I tried thinking of happy scents, like vanilla and cinnamon, but to no avail. Pigs put up a fight against even the wildest of imaginations.
    â€œSmell?” Jayne clicked the final of seventeen buckles on Emmy’s car seat. “Oh, the pigs. Yes, I suppose I am used to it.” She positioned herself behind the wheel and we started up the driveway. “The summer is always a challenge. Heat’s never a good thing for a manure pile.”
    My stomach turned at the thought. The scarf stayed right where it was, even though we were whizzing down the highway and away from the farm.
    â€œIt’s too bad you’re seeing Maplewood at this time of the year.” Jayne nodded toward the pale expanse of fields that surrounded us. The wind howled against the car, blending in with Emmy’s whimpers and making Jayne grip the steering wheel with white knuckles. “Spring is much prettier. You probably can’t imagine it right now, but everything becomes green. Green so bright you have to squint.”
    She tossed a stuffed animal to the baby in back. Emmy looked a bit stunned but stopped crying and clutched the spotted dog that had been hurled to her rescue.
    â€œYou’re right,” I said, looking out my window. “It’s very hard to imagine now.” Sunlight would have helped. The sky was a transparent white, almost an absence of color. No clouds, no difference in texture or hue from one side of the horizon to another. “Did you grow up here, Jayne?”
    â€œYep,” she said, signaling to turn right onto another endless stretch of highway. We’d been in the car ten minutes and still no sign of a convenience store, much less a college. “Cal and I started dating in high school. He’s two years older, so he left first for State and I followed him when I graduated. We got married when he finished and moved back home two years later.”
    We crested a hill and saw the town of Maplewood below us.