Read Online In Twenty Years: A Novel by Allison Winn Scotch - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Allison Winn Scotch
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didn’t.
David Monroe, Esq., had e-mailed that the keys would be left under the front mat. Annie peers around. The street is dormant, sleepy, her taxi long gone, the remaining row houses silent. Twenty years ago, leaving the keys under the front mat would have been an open invitation to armed robbery—literal armed robbery—but now the neighborhood has shifted. Annie stares left, then right, then left again, dubious, as if there can’t be anything safe about returning, about these square blocks. She wills her legs to get going, and then, before she can think otherwise, she’s on her old front stoop, and then she’s crouching down and the keys are there. She wants to be the first one here—she prays she’s the first one here—but she raps her knuckles against the door to be sure.
Nothing.
So she clicks the latch, and then she’s inside.
It still smells the same. That’s what hits her first. An unmistakable blend of old wood, pine air freshener, and spilled beer. Annie gags—not because the scent is rancid, rather because it’s a time capsule. If she closes her eyes and slows her pulse, she could be twenty and on the brink of everything, the scholarship kid who found her way out of her Podunk Texas town: the girl who managed to shed her accent because it was the shadow that betrayed where she came from. Where she came from was a footnote to where she was going.
David Monroe, Esq., hasn’t changed the house all that much. Fresher paint, yes, but the walls are still a shade that skews closer to dull yellow than white, the banister still wobbly and faded pine. There’s a corkboard by the wall off the kitchen, blank and full of tiny holes, where they used to post fraternity-party invitations, flyers for charity drives, notes to one another on corners torn off notebook paper, saying things like “Studying in Van Pelt until forever.” Or “If you order froyo, get me a swirl.”
A couch still abuts the back bay window; a flea market dining table still resides just off the kitchen, where the six of them would gather on Sunday for Catherine’s French toast. Or where Annie and Bea would nurse cups of tea while the rest of them had gone out drinking (Bea often went out drinking too, to be fair), and Bea prodded her about what she was going to do with her life. Every once in a while, she’d pull out a self-help book she’d bought at the bookstore and ease it toward Annie—not because she was being didactic, but because that’s the sort of thing Bea did, and that’s the sort of kindness you accepted from her.
Annie brushes her hands across the dining table. It’s the first time in years, maybe since the funeral, that Bea’s death has felt so visceral. The first time that the five of them will be here. Without Bea. Her nose pinches, and she flutters back tears. This seems like an impossible thing. She wallows in this until she worries the others will be here any second, and she can’t be a mess, can’t be anything like who she used to be. She wearily climbs the creaky steps toward her past.
She’s upstairs staring at the ceiling in her old bedroom, lying on its Ikea bed, her mind spinning, calculating, racing with just how much longer she can bear to be here, when she hears the door unlatch.
Shoot. She thinks. Please don’t let it be Lindy. Please be Catherine. Neutral ground. She sits up too quickly.
“Hello?” The voice echoes up the creaky steps and scratched bannister.
Colin . . . damn it! She hasn’t even changed these ridiculous pants. She unbuttons them quickly, then realizes she’ll never make it in time—they may have to be suctioned off her—and flops down again, flummoxed by her idiocy. Her nerves rise up from her stomach to her throat, but she swallows them down and blows out her breath.
Then she shouts, “Colin! I’m here!” She stills herself and hopes that he comes to her so her anxiety-plagued, leather-clad legs won’t be forced to make the trip down the steps. She hears
David Monroe, Esq., had e-mailed that the keys would be left under the front mat. Annie peers around. The street is dormant, sleepy, her taxi long gone, the remaining row houses silent. Twenty years ago, leaving the keys under the front mat would have been an open invitation to armed robbery—literal armed robbery—but now the neighborhood has shifted. Annie stares left, then right, then left again, dubious, as if there can’t be anything safe about returning, about these square blocks. She wills her legs to get going, and then, before she can think otherwise, she’s on her old front stoop, and then she’s crouching down and the keys are there. She wants to be the first one here—she prays she’s the first one here—but she raps her knuckles against the door to be sure.
Nothing.
So she clicks the latch, and then she’s inside.
It still smells the same. That’s what hits her first. An unmistakable blend of old wood, pine air freshener, and spilled beer. Annie gags—not because the scent is rancid, rather because it’s a time capsule. If she closes her eyes and slows her pulse, she could be twenty and on the brink of everything, the scholarship kid who found her way out of her Podunk Texas town: the girl who managed to shed her accent because it was the shadow that betrayed where she came from. Where she came from was a footnote to where she was going.
David Monroe, Esq., hasn’t changed the house all that much. Fresher paint, yes, but the walls are still a shade that skews closer to dull yellow than white, the banister still wobbly and faded pine. There’s a corkboard by the wall off the kitchen, blank and full of tiny holes, where they used to post fraternity-party invitations, flyers for charity drives, notes to one another on corners torn off notebook paper, saying things like “Studying in Van Pelt until forever.” Or “If you order froyo, get me a swirl.”
A couch still abuts the back bay window; a flea market dining table still resides just off the kitchen, where the six of them would gather on Sunday for Catherine’s French toast. Or where Annie and Bea would nurse cups of tea while the rest of them had gone out drinking (Bea often went out drinking too, to be fair), and Bea prodded her about what she was going to do with her life. Every once in a while, she’d pull out a self-help book she’d bought at the bookstore and ease it toward Annie—not because she was being didactic, but because that’s the sort of thing Bea did, and that’s the sort of kindness you accepted from her.
Annie brushes her hands across the dining table. It’s the first time in years, maybe since the funeral, that Bea’s death has felt so visceral. The first time that the five of them will be here. Without Bea. Her nose pinches, and she flutters back tears. This seems like an impossible thing. She wallows in this until she worries the others will be here any second, and she can’t be a mess, can’t be anything like who she used to be. She wearily climbs the creaky steps toward her past.
She’s upstairs staring at the ceiling in her old bedroom, lying on its Ikea bed, her mind spinning, calculating, racing with just how much longer she can bear to be here, when she hears the door unlatch.
Shoot. She thinks. Please don’t let it be Lindy. Please be Catherine. Neutral ground. She sits up too quickly.
“Hello?” The voice echoes up the creaky steps and scratched bannister.
Colin . . . damn it! She hasn’t even changed these ridiculous pants. She unbuttons them quickly, then realizes she’ll never make it in time—they may have to be suctioned off her—and flops down again, flummoxed by her idiocy. Her nerves rise up from her stomach to her throat, but she swallows them down and blows out her breath.
Then she shouts, “Colin! I’m here!” She stills herself and hopes that he comes to her so her anxiety-plagued, leather-clad legs won’t be forced to make the trip down the steps. She hears
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