there’s a leak somewhere (chapter 28)

(image courtesy NIcky Reynolds)

For those who have not been following along, this is chapter 28 of my novel, What Would Water Do, which was inspired by the birth of my second daughter and Kate Chopin’s Awakening, a story about a woman torn between her own desires and what society expects from her.

To start at the beginning, click here and scroll down.  

Almost as an afterthought and before she can stop herself, Drew picks up the phone and dials her father.  He answers on the sixth ring.  

“Hi, it’s me.”  She’s fresh from the shower, sitting at Katherine Lillien’s well-lit mirror, inspecting her pores in a retractable magnifying mirror.  “How’s everything?”

“Oh, you know.  Just the same.”  She can see it all without closing her eyes:  dark corners of the garage furred with cobwebs, metal shelves stacked with mildewed boxes, tools hanging in their outlined spots on the pegboard, humid air thick with dust and turpentine and gasoline and him, perched on the worktable stool in his graying undershirt and boxers like a pale, spindly spider.  He says, “Actually, I’m going through some old boxes.”

“That’s good.  Out with the old, in with the new.”  She’s waiting for him to ask so she can tell him about her plans for the day, how she will attend the premiere of the film she wrote, red carpet and all, how she will see her name listed in the writing credits on a wide screen, but he always gets to talk first in their conversations–he’s the father, after all, there’s that unspoken hierarchy of importance, so she asks, “Find anything good?”

“Just a bunch of old junk.”

 

A large portion of this chapter has been deleted.

To read more, contact me and we can discuss publication. (!)

anna@girlinthehat.com

Tags: chapter, family, fiction, kate chopin, novel, what would water do, writing