Read Online In Twenty Years: A Novel by Allison Winn Scotch - Free Book Online

dirty window of the taxi, which smells like a fake evergreen tree and turns Annie’s stomach just a bit faster, the roil of nausea cresting upward. The Philadelphia skyline and the Schuylkill River are fading behind her, the campus drawing nearer. A red, white, and blue sign hangs from the gritty overpass, rust stained and mildewed, welcoming guests to campus:
    J ULY 4TH W EEKEND: C OME W ALK THE R OAD TO F REEDOM!
     
    Freedom. Annie hasn’t had a weekend to herself—really, an afternoon to herself—since Gus was born. She’s not complaining. She made those choices. To fire the full-time nanny so she didn’t miss a moment; to rise through the ranks of the PTA so she had a way to fill the endless hours while Baxter worked. She whipped up cakes for bake sales, volunteered for book drives, jumped in to help at science projects and art fairs, and put together an absolutely knock-your-socks-off teacher appreciation breakfast last May. She hoped all this would magically unlock the gates to those alfresco mommy lunches, the wine-pairing dinner parties she heard about at drop-off. Not yet, though. Maybe this year when she’s PTA vice president. She’ll work twice as hard. Maybe then.
    xo
    The pesky, too-cordial sign-off on Baxter’s text needles her brain.
    No. Annie shakes her head as if shaking off the notion. She refuses to consider it. They were so good now, so much better now. The way concern washed over his face two nights ago, his posture upright and tense, his words tender and paternal. No. She must be misinterpreting.
    “You going to the festival?” The taxi driver shouts over his shoulder, meeting her eyes in the rearview mirror.
    “I’m sorry?” His accent is thick, and Annie hopes he’s not offended she can’t understand him. “I’m sorry,” she says again.
    “Colonial festival. All weekend! Lots of fun.”
    “Oh no, no festival for me.”
    “Too bad, very fun. Good hot dogs. I’m from Pakistan. We do not have good hot dogs.”
    Annie mindlessly fiddles with her phone and thinks about how much Gus loves hot dogs, how maybe she should have brought him along for these few days, shown him off. She bets the four of them would be enamored with him. How could you not be? She scrolls through some unbearably adorable photos of Gus to pass the last few blocks.
    xo
    No. No, no, no, no, no.
    The cab deposits Annie on the corner of Forty-First Street and Walnut, and she stands there for a minute too long, frozen, lost in the drift of the eighteen years that have passed since she was a senior at Penn and this was her home and everything was different.
    In those years, forty wasn’t even on her radar. Forty is ancient! Forty is one foot in the grave! Forty was a blip, like a myth, like a UFO sighting or the Loch Ness monster, like the story of the rabid wolves her mom used to tell her when she was just yay high, and they were uprooted from yet another dilapidated house, or she’d lost another waitress job, or been dumped by another lousy boyfriend.
    “There are wolves here, dear,” she said. “We have to get going. We’ll be better off with a fresh start. It’s my job to keep you safe, and I can’t protect you from rabies!”
    Every time her bedroom window would rattle in the wind, Annie worried it was the wolves, no matter how many times she rose to peek out into the dark, empty landscape, no matter if, rationally, she knew that rabid wolves didn’t eat people in southern Texas. But what if they did?
    Wolves, it turns out, look nothing like you expect them to.
    Her throat tightens, her stomach clenches. She is frozen on their old sidewalk in front of their old house, chased by their old memories.
    “Lady, you OK?” the taxi driver finally yells out his window. “Wrong address?”
    She worries that she hasn’t tipped him enough—she’s always worried she hasn’t tipped people enough—so she reaches into her purse to give him five more, but he waves her off, and then he guns his engine and he’s