Read Online The Barefoot Believers by Annie Jones - Free Book Online Page A

trying to get Kate set, well, right accidentally put them in position to see the orange glowing lights of Billy J’s Bait Shack Seafood Buffet. Then it was as if the whole landscape fell into place and they were on their way.
    Being early fall, it was not yet fully dark, but the best light of the day had begun to fade when they found the rusted and bent street sign proclaiming Dream Away Bay Co.
    The rest had fallen off but they’d gotten the gist and gotten to the cottage.
    Jo was relieved.
    Kate was exhausted.
    After helping Kate out of the car, Jo went around to open the trunk, then paused. She raised her head like a gazelle at a watering hole listening for lions. She frowned. “I thought this place was closer to the beach.”
    â€œIt was. Thirty years ago when you were a kid.” Kate walked, well, limped, really, up the drive. She leaned the hip bone that wasn’t connected to her nearly numb leg bone and soon-to-be-aching-again foot bone against the front fender, took a deep breath and let it out, slowly.
    Seeing the old place again almost overwhelmed Kate. She hadn’t expected to feel such a…connection to it. To have the memories flood over her so fast and form so fully realized.
    She and Jo as children.
    Playing.
    Laughing.
    Mom, happy.
    Well, relaxed, if not undeniably happy.
    The sun.
    The sand.
    Vince.
    The image of a young man, with Paul Newman eyes and just a hint of Alfred E. Neuman around the gap-toothed grin, broad shouldered and bronzed from the sun formed in her mind. No matter how much time had passed, this place would always remind her of him. There was no running away from that.
    â€œWe don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to,” Jo called out.
    â€œOh, it’s fine. It just needs a little TLC,” Kate returned. “And a well-aimed hammer and nails.”
    The railings leaned decidedly to the left and inward. Their many missing spindles gave her the impression the cottage was greeting her with a toothy grin in need of a good dentist.
    â€œHammer and nails? Don’t you mean a wrecking ball and an excavator?”
    Kate laughed her sister off. “It’s rustic.”
    â€œOkay, I’ll give you that.” Jo’s lips twitched. “But can’t you get tetanus from that much rust?”
    â€œWhat did you expect?”
    â€œHonestly, I don’t know what I expected. But I sure hoped for something…” Her voice trailed off.
    Kate didn’t question her further. Instead she turned again to look at the facade of the old place.
    The wicker flower box under the upstairs dormer window, which had always made the place look like something from a tropical watercolor painting, now hung higher on one side than the other. More dried twigs poked through the sides of it than shriveled, dead flowers swayed in the breeze on top. The dead petals scraped against the tarnished storm window screen with a sound that reminded Kate of a knife on burned toast.
    The yard had bald patches. The bushes were overgrown. Bits of the scrollwork trim had broken off in the eaves. The trim around the porch was splintered. It all needed painting.
    Over the sixteen years since she had last stood at this vantage point, the sidewalk had sunken down four inches in spots and jutted up in rocky slabs in others. Two big bins of trash, including a lot of brown and green bottles and crushed soda and beer cans, sat by the curb. A sign hung across the front door warning against stepping foot on the front porch and suggesting they go around back.
    â€œIt’s a disaster,” Jo muttered.
    â€œI think it’s wonderful,” Kate murmured.
    Try as she might to blame that response on her medication, she more honestly suspected she was seeing the sweet old cottage through the eyes of the five-year-old who had first come here full of anticipation. Not through the filter of the thirty-nine-year-old who had arrived today with a broken foot and a lifetime