Copyright MEGAN HART

unauthorized reproduction forbidden

 

Liesel Albright liked to run.

She ran outside every morning when the weather was nice, up and down the hills of her neighborhood, passing houses with their windows often still dark and inhabitants blissfully asleep. When the weather was bad she ran inside on her treadmill while she streamed old television shows from Interflix on her computer monitor. She didn’t like this as much, because running at home meant Christopher could and would stop in to interrupt her with questions about things he could surely have figured out for himself, if only she weren’t so deliciously accessible. He also like to kiss her before he left for work, and it was never the kisses Liesel minded or the sentiment behind them, but the simple fact that it was impossible for her husband to properly kiss her while her feet were steadily chewing up the miles that never took her anywhere. She always had to stop running in order to offer him her mouth, and she hated the way he squeezed her when she was all sweaty.

Running outside was better.

Outside, she ran with her headphones on and listened to anything she wanted without worrying what anyone might think about her penchant for the latest pop hits or retro songs from her youth. Even from her parents’ youths. Audiobooks, podcasts. Occasionally her iPod shuffled a movie while she ran, and sometimes instead of skipping it Liesel listened to the dialogue from her favorite films. She covered a lot of distance with Han Solo and Luke Skywalker cheering her on.

She wasn’t a spectacularly fast runner, and she’d never gotten herself all worked up about running as a sport. No marathons for her, no fancy equipment like pedometers or sweatbands that wicked away the moisture. She invested in the best sneakers she could justify buying and made sure her running clothes fit well so they didn’t chafe or have her risk an injury, but beyond that, Liesel simply woke every morning a spare half a minute before her alarm went off. She got up, brushed her teeth, slipped in her contact lenses, tucked her hair under a knit cap if it was cold, went outside…and ran.

The benefits of the exercise were, of course, obvious in the physical. A tight butt and belly that looked okay in a bikini even if her thighs would always jiggle too much for her taste. Liesel had never been a fan of mini-skirts and Daisy Duke-style shorts, but she liked knowing that if she wanted to wear outfits like that, she could get away with it even though she was inching out of her thirties.

Beyond the physical, though, were the mental benefits she gained from the exercise. While she was running, it was not only possible for Liesel to put aside everything that was in her head, it was nearly impossible for her to do anything else. No worries about the mess the world was in and how her donations to charities were useless when people were still dying every day from disasters both natural and man-made, and they always would. She didn’t have to think about the holidays, how much money to spend on gifts to do her part in stimulating the economy so that she could stop worrying about that…putting one foot in front of the other, faster and faster, the slap of her sneakers on the pavement the only sound that mattered, Liesel didn’t have to worry if her house was clean enough or if she ought to pull out the fridge and get underneath it with the mop.

When she was running, Liesel was free.

Not that she’d ever have said so to anyone. Most of her girlfriends worked out, sure, sweating away on the stair-steppers and elliptical trainers at the gym or bouncing along to exercise classes. But they all professed to hating it and looked forward to the days they could be “too busy” to get to the gym. They laughed at her, fondly but with a faint lift of the eyebrows, when she said she loved running.

“The only time I’ll run on purpose is if something’s chasing me,” her best friend Becka was fond of saying. “Or unless maybe Enrique Iglesias is running in front of me. And probably not even then.”

Becka had married her college sweetheart Kent. They had three sons and a spoiled but adorable daughter, Annabelle, who Liesel liked to borrow for girly outings like pedicures and Disney cartoons. Becka knew Liesel better than anyone in the whole world ever had, at least once upon a time, but that same time had put a distance between them now. If Liesel told Becka she liked to run so she didn’t have to worry about anything, Becka would laugh and say, “Honey, what on earth do you have to worry about anyway?”

Christopher wouldn’t understand either and would probably take offense to the idea that Liesel had anything to escape. He’d take it personally, she knew that, the way he was so sensitive to everything. When she filled the fridge with fruits, veggies and low-fat yogurts because she was trying to eat healthier, he bemoaned the fact she thought he needed to lose weight and plunged himself headfirst into a bag of cheese curls. The truth was, Christopher worked out even more religiously than Liesel, not because he liked it, but because in his mind, it was a necessity. He probably assumed the same of her, though he often encouraged her to “mix up” her “workout” the way he did, with strength-training in addition to the cardio. Sometimes she did it, just to keep him happy and because it turned her on to watch her husband shirtless and sweaty, arms corded and bulging as he lifted.

But not today. Today, Liesel was running. Because it was Saturday she’d taken her time, waiting until after lunch when the sun would’ve warmed the air to a tolerable level. Down the long and winding driveway, careful to avoid the patches of ice and onto the street. There’d been a couple decent snowfalls interspersed with warmer days, so the roads were covered with layers of salt and grit mixed into puddles that might freeze later but for now just sent splashes of dirty water up against the backs of her calves. She started off at a slow jog, wary of ice that could be hidden, but soon she warmed up and started to move faster.

It took her twenty minutes to jog to the Rails-to-Trails path that ran along an old railroad line. In the summer, spring and fall it was almost worthless to try and run there because she had to fight for room against all the bikes, but in the winter she usually had the trail to herself. Though the trail wasn’t salted or even plowed, the gravel underneath the snow had heated enough on the warm days to melt a clear path. She felt safer running there than on the road, where passing cars paid no attention to her, and she could end up in a pile of snow or a ditch on the side of the road. All it would take was one careless driver answering a text message or skipping around the channels on the radio, and she’d be Stephen Kinged.

But then she was worrying again, and Liesel wasn’t interested in worry. She drew in a breath of February air several degrees more bitter than she’d expected, slipped in her earbuds and turned on the music. Oh, there was that cutie Enrique, crooning to her about all the dirty things he’d do — that song had been a gift from Becka, who’d had a proclivity for songs with filthy lyrics ever since she’d stolen her older sister’s copy of Prince’s Controversy album.

One foot in front of the other. Fast and faster. Liesel ran.

Her breath puffed out of her in thick white plumes. Alone on the path she pretended she was a dragon, snorting fire. The music on her iPod shuffled through to some death-metal ballad with lyrics so emo they made her laugh but with a driving, grinding beat that got her blood pumping.

Fast and faster.

Here in the trees the sun hadn’t warmed the path as much. She had to swerve around bigger piles of snow and even occasionally half-frozen puddles. Even as she knew she was just asking for a wipeout, Liesel was reaching that state of gorgeous blankness when all she could focus on was her heartbeat thumping in her ears, the taste of the wind on her tongue and the burn of it in her nostrils. When her knees rose and dropped, her feet slapped the ground and her fists pumped back and forth. Some people called it a runner’s high, but Liesel had been high a few times and this was nothing like that muzzy headed, twirling and sort of delirious feeling she’d gotten from weed. This was something else, something better, and she pushed herself toward it, flying down the path toward the bridge that spanned the rural highway.

As it turned out, the signs warning motorists that “Bridge freezes before road” also applied to runners. Liesel was three steps onto the bridge when she hit the first patch of ice. Two more steps took her, arms flailing and back wrenching, to the guardrail. She hit it with her shoulder, then her head, hard enough to clack her jaws together. Her teeth barely clipped the tip of her tongue, but the pain was instant and excruciating.

She ended up flat on her back with the world spinning above her, the sound of traffic below her very loud. “Shit!”

Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

Oh, this hurt like a mother, as Becka would’ve said, except something like this would never happen to Becka because she only ran if something was chasing her. Liesel groaned experimentally. Then again, louder. It didn’t make her feel any better, but it gave her the motivation to heave herself up off the ground. She used the guardrail and then clung to it, her mittens scarcely any protection against the sting of the cold metal. Her butt hurt. Her knees hurt. So did her lower back and the shoulder she’d hit. Her head seemed fine, but her tongue ached when she scraped it against the backs of her teeth. The pain didn’t stop her from doing it again, though. Then again.

“Damn it,” Liesel said aloud. She tested each of her arms and legs, but nothing seemed broken. She’d torn the knee of her track pants and her sneaker had come untied, but that was the extent of her damage.

It was going to be a long walk back home. As she fumbled in her coat pocket for her cellphone, two ambulances and three cop cars flew past on the highway, heading out of town. They all had their flashing lights on, but no sirens. She watched them disappear over the hill. It wasn’t like she’d never seen an ambulance or a cop car before, but so many at once was strange.

She tried the house first, but got no answer. Christopher must’ve already left for his Saturday racquetball match or whatever he had going on. As she waited for the call to go through, Liesel watched another ambulance speed down the highway in the same direction as the others. This one wasn’t local, but from the next town. It was followed by another going just as fast, from a different but also nearby town.

Christopher wasn’t answering.

“C’mon,” Liesel muttered. Her bones were already creaking. “Pick up.”

He didn’t. She leaned against the guardrail, assessing the damage and decided she could probably make it home. Slowly. Painfully. She started walking, the pain easing as she worked her joints, but Liesel knew it would get much worse later.

Twenty minutes running was closer to an hour walking, especially with a limp. By the time she got home, all Liesel could think about was a hot bath, some Ibuprofen, assorted ice packs and the comfort of her couch. Stripping out of her clothes on the chilly bathroom tile floor, she got a good glimpse of herself in the full-length mirror. Bruises were already forming on both knees and the shoulder that had hit the guardrail.

The trickle of blood down her inner thigh shouldn’t have surprised or shocked her. After all, it had happened every month since she was fourteen. She sank onto the toilet seat and put her face in her hands, her elbows pressing on her sore knees. She breathed in slowly through her nose and out through her mouth, forcing away the sobs the way she’d fight off a gag. It didn’t work.

Liesel wept.

It wasn’t the pain in her knees, her back, her shoulder. Not even the creeping, growing ache in her guts that would get worse instead of better for the next day or so. Those were physical pains, and just as the benefits of running were two-fold, physical and mental both, so was this pain.

It was made more so because she ought to have expected it. She’d been tracking her consistently irregular periods for the past year and a half with the help of an ovulation tracking website, and though her body stubbornly refused to conform to any set pattern when it came to timing, she’d carefully marked the possible dates of ovulation on her calendar. Problem was, she and Christopher hadn’t made love that week — he’d been out of town on business. Still, simply because of the irregularity, she’d held out hope that just this once the timing had been right.

It had been a foolish hope, and this was proof of it. She didn’t want to sit here naked on the toilet in the chilly bathroom, every inch of her aching, and cry. She wanted to get into a hot bath with some scented oil and soak away the disappointment and the pains. Most of the time she dealt with this monthly reminder that she wasn’t going to be a mother by being practical, matter-of-fact, even forcefully optimistic that though her clock was ticking, ticking, time was far from run out. But for now, in just this moment, all Liesel could do was sit and shiver and sniffle. A runner of clear snot dripped from her nose, and she wiped it with the back of her hand, not caring about the mess.

She couldn’t even share her disappointment with Christopher, and that somehow made it all worse. He didn’t want children and had made that very clear over the years. They cost too much, got in the way, ruined vacations, took up too much time. Children smelled bad and were too loud. He wasn’t, he said, cut out to be a dad.

He knew she’d stopped taking her birth control pills, and they never used condoms. Liesel knew her husband understood the risks of sex without protection, but they never discussed the consequences of it. It was unspoken, the knowledge that she wanted a baby and he did not, but that whatever happened would happen, and they’d deal with it then. Not that it mattered, since every month passed with another week of blood and cramps and silent tears she couldn’t share.

The doorbell rang.

Liesel swiped at her face, listening. They lived too far out in the woods to ever get random guests, not even by proselytizing religious groups. She wasn’t expecting a package delivery.

The doorbell rang again, then again. Liesel quickly got a tampon and took care of herself, wiping her nose with tissue this time. She washed her hands quickly and threw on a robe, belting it as she hobbled down the stairs. She thought for sure whoever was interrupting her self-indulgent weep-fest would’ve left by the time she got there, so when she opened the door and saw the young woman standing there holding a baby, two small children beside her, Liesel blinked several times. The vision didn’t waver or disappear, which meant it was real.

“Hello?” Liesel said. “Can I help you?”

The girl, who couldn’t have been any older than sixteen or seventeen, opened her mouth but no words came out. She wore a nightgown and a hooded sweatshirt with a broken zipper. Work boots that were too big for her, Liesel noted with growing concern. The baby in her arms had no coat, just a ragged blanket tucked around it. The kids, a tow-headed boy and a matching little sister, weren’t dressed any better.

Liesel clutched the throat of her robe closer to her neck. “Are you okay? What’s wrong? Can I help you?”

“I hope so,” the girl said finally in a hoarse voice that sounded like she’d spent her share of recent time crying too. “I’m here to see Christopher Albright.”