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No Tomorrows

By Deb Gorman

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The woman in the mirror tormented her. She stepped back and turned off the light.
Now the woman in the mirror was a frightening shadow, right index finger outstretched, pinning her to guilt.
Of course. It was Thursday.
Annie turned the light back on.
She gasped. The image was herself, but decades older. Face sagging, eyes unnaturally black and unlit, hair sparse and gray, wrinkled hands trembling at her waist.
She needed to stop this madness now, before she became her reflection.
She turned, throwing one last glance at the mirror, losing her breath because the woman in the mirror had not moved.
She shut her eyes and headed to the stairs and dinner with her husband and four children.
***
Annie Lee reached the bottom of the staircase and glanced at the front door. She heard an odd scratching noise. It wasn’t Max wanting in, because he sat across the living room staring at her, tail thumping the carpet.
What was that sound? Gripping the handrail with shaky fingers, she cocked her head and listened. Nothing.
She sagged against the wall. Annie always hoped it would be different, that the dread wouldn’t return just because it was Thursday, but she knew what she’d heard. It had slithered in again, and she’d have to confront it before the night was over.
Thursdays were always the same.
Annie let go of the stair railing, smoothed her hair, and tiptoed toward the dining room. She heard the banter and managed to relax and smile as she heard Roger perform his impression of Roadrunner for the kids. She paused to listen.
Her grin broadened at Kimmie’s high-pitched voice. “But why does he beep, Daddy?”
Hands clasped together to stop the tremble, Annie continued to the dining room, where her husband and four children waited. Before entering, she stopped at her collection of porcelain monarch butterflies and straightened one. Touching the beautiful creature settled her nerves.
The food was already on the table, and Annie threw Roger a grateful glance.
He stood and pulled her chair out. “There you are. What took you so long?”
She paused to master the shake in her voice. “Doesn’t matter. I’m here now.”
After the blessing, Annie started the mashed potatoes around the table. “How was your day, kids? Anything interesting happen?”
She asked the same question at dinner every night, never sure what she was getting herself into. Sometimes just blank stares, but other times their comedic creativity flowed.
Like the time a couple of years ago when Hank wove a long story of skipping school and going to the casino with his best friend, Shane. She had to give him an A+ for imagination.
Or when Kymber—Kimmie for short—said school was exciting that day because Elvis had visited. The family had watched a documentary of his life and music the night before, and evidently the seven-year-old had forgotten the part about Elvis having died decades ago.
And then there was Mayra, who had her own imaginative stories—but her fierce teenaged sophistication prevented her from sharing them. Instead, she’d perfected sarcasm to an art form.
It didn’t matter to Annie, as long as she asked the question that had become part of her nightly routine. It was like stamping a smiley face on the end of the day, giving tomorrow permission to begin.
Outside, a car horn blared in their central Washington cul-de-sac. Annie and Roger jumped at the sound, but Max didn’t even bark. The huge black Lab sat, as he did every night, at the corner of the table between Hank, almost thirteen, and Roger. Max’s head topped the table by three inches, tongue hanging out, drooling at the smell of grilled pork chops.
They’d gotten Max seven years ago from a nearby shelter when he was a floppy-eared six-month-old pup with gigantic feet. Hank had won the naming contest. Mayra had never gotten over it, but who had ever heard of a dog named Tweeter? Roger offered to get her a parakeet, but the humor was lost on the then eight-year-old.
Annie and Roger had tried to teach Max table manners, but he’d proven more stubborn than both of them—and as Roger said, they had enough trouble teaching the kids their table manners, let alone the family dog.
Since no one had answered the nightly question yet, Annie prompted them again as she reached for the pork-chop platter. “And you too, Roger. Anything interesting happen today in the world of finance?”
The skin around his dark-brown eyes crinkled. “Nope. Same old, same old, as usual.” His standard answer.
Roger always said finance was a world in which six months of dull was followed by three days of sheer terror until the stock market righted itself and people started buying and selling as usual.
Annie thrived on as usual. Lord knew her life before Roger—as a navy brat—had been anything but boring. She’d struggled through years of moving from base to base until she was ten, always having to say goodbye to friends and start over. She tried not to dwell on it though, usually successful at keeping her well-developed insecurities down inside where the sun didn’t shine.
“Anything else?”
Roger reached for his fork, which caused Max to raise his head, nose twitching. Roger glared, causing the dog’s head to go down a notch, resting his furry chin on the table.
“Well, Harv did spring for lunch, the old tightwad. He wants to meet with me tomorrow.”
Annie raised an eyebrow. “About what? A partnership?”
“Not sure. We’ll see. Probably to give me kudos for landing the Jackson account—you know, that retired couple from California who moved up here with their millions to invest.”
“Wow, Dad. Do you get some of their money?”
Roger grinned and handed him the pork-chop platter.
“No, Hank. I invest it for them. Hopefully, make them some more money. At least, that’s always the plan.”
Hank scowled. “You don’t get any of it? That’s not fair. What’s the use of working there if you don’t get any of their money?”
Mayra seared her brother with a superior glare. “Hank, you’re so dumb. Dad gets paid.”
“But—”
Annie broke in with practiced smoothness. “Kids, you haven’t told us about your day yet.” She and Roger hated arguments and sniping and took turns putting the brakes on it.
Mayra wrapped a tendril of long hair around one finger. “Oh yeah. Remember I told you we have to write an essay?”
Hank butt in. “Essays are boring. Let me tell you mine.”
“Rude—I’m older. I should answer first.” At fifteen and the oldest, Mayra had an inflated sense of self-importance.
Roger stilled Mayra’s comment with a wave of his hand, reminding Annie of a Jedi knight in Star Wars. “Let Hank go first, okay?”
“Fine. It’ll probably be just more Hank-ness anyway.”
“Funny, Mayra.” Roger turned to Hank. “Okay, son, you’ve got the floor. Make it good.”
“It is. So I have a question for you. Mr. Neely asked it today, and we had to write our answers on slips of paper and turn them in.”
Mayra sniffed. “Ugh, science—”
“Hey, science is cool.”
Roger thumped his forefinger on the table. “The question, Hank.”
“Okay, here it is. If the earth stopped spinning—I mean, just stopped dead from spinning all of a sudden—what would happen next?” He looked around the table. “Anybody know?”
Four frowns appeared as everyone—except three-year-old Nora, contemplating the small mound of vegetables on her toddler-sized plate—considered the question.
“Well? Who’s gonna guess first?”
“No school!” Kimmie yelled.
“No yelling at the dinner table,” Mayra said.
Hank pointed at Kimmie across the table. “You’re right. But why, mush-head?”
“Come on, Hank. She’s only seven. Give her some credit,” Roger said with a grin at Kimmie. He leaned down eye level with her. “Good job, honey.”
Kimmie smirked at Hank, folding her arms over her chest like a boardroom boss.
“Dad, aren’t you gonna guess?”
“Well, let’s see. The earth stops spinning all at once?”
“Yup.” Hank sat back in his chair, index finger on his chin, his expression like the Cheshire cat with a secret.
Roger glanced at Annie. “What do you think, Mom? Any ideas for our budding scientist?”
Annie shook her head and looked at her plate, a tight feeling in her chest at the direction the conversation had taken, but unable to think of a graceful way to stop it. She’d started it, after all.
“Okay, Hank,” Roger started. “I guess nobody would have a tomorrow, right? It’s the rotation of the earth that makes tomorrow arrive. Without that rotation—”
Annie looked at Nora, then back at Roger. She needed to stop this.
“All right, let’s change the subject—” She didn’t mean to sound gruff, but that was the way the words popped out.
“Mom, don’t you want to know the answer?” Hank leaned toward Roger. “You’re right, Dad. Tomorrow wouldn’t come. But something else would happen right away. There’d be sudden winds, about a thousand miles an hour, the teacher said. And they would flatten everything on earth, except at the poles. So no school the next day, because there wouldn’t be any schools or a next day. And Mr. Neely said ocean waves a hundred miles tall. How’s that for cool?”
Roger shook his head with a grimace. “Very cool, Hank. Thanks for sharing.”
He gestured to Mayra. “You’re up.”
“Maybe we can just eat now.” Annie didn’t want to hear about Mayra’s essay.
“But, Mom, Hank got to tell his. Why can’t I tell mine?”
Annie raised her hands in surrender. “Fine. But let’s not let our food get cold, you guys. We can eat and listen at the same time.”
“Okay, my essay.”
Roger handed her the mashed potatoes. “Uh-huh.”
Mayra grabbed for the bowl. “Miss Harris gave us a choice of three questions to answer.” Mayra passed the dinner rolls to him without answering.
“Oh?” Roger took the rolls and paused with the basket midair.
She spooned some mashed potatoes onto her plate, dipping her finger in for a taste. “Oh, good. Cheese, no onion.”
Roger grunted, clearly exasperated. “Don’t keep us in suspense. What question did you choose?”
Mayra speared a pork chop and sawed off a bite while everyone waited. “What would I do today if I knew I’d die tomorrow?” She popped the morsel into her mouth. “Mmm. Good, Mom.”
Annie stared at Mayra, who chomped her meat and chased it down with a noisy slurp of milk.
“Kinda goes along with Hank’s, huh Mom?”
Hank smirked. “Yeah, but yours is just an essay. Mine’s real.”
Mayra threw him her best know-it-all glance. “How do you know? It’s never happened before. And probably never will, dufus.” She drained her glass of milk.
The pounding in Annie’s head kept time with the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner. Her gaze narrowed to Mayra’s unperturbed profile, the teen clearly unaware she’d sent her mother tumbling through a decades-old abyss.
Annie was unable to stop her mad descent into the same unreasoning fear she’d suffered all her remembered life, that the other shoe would drop soon and wrench everything good out of her breath and being. Except it wasn’t exactly unreasoning. She’d been here before.
She heard the scratching sound again. The old fear hissed behind her, then glided in, serpentlike as the silence enclosed her. Just as it always did.
What she wouldn’t give for a week without a Thursday.

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