Read Online In Twenty Years: A Novel by Allison Winn Scotch - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Allison Winn Scotch
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gone, and she’s still there, staring at the row house, trying to remember the girl who once lived here.
She adjusts her new haircut and wipes her palms on the leather pants she already regrets. The July heat is damp, unavoidable, sweltering, and the leather appears to have rubberized around her thighs. The stilettos are digging into her pinky toe, blisters ripe and pink on both feet and also developing on her heels.
Breathe. This is what that therapist used to tell her, the one her OB-GYN insisted she see when she broke down on the exam table at her six-month postnatal appointment, her legs still aloft in the stirrups, the rest of her quaking so much the thin paper sheet beneath her shredded in two. Breathe. In. Out. In. Out.
She collects herself and, though her hands are shaking, she holds her phone up to capture the moment. The sun is just starting to fade behind the front façade, which, she thinks to herself, makes the image all the more precious. Maybe she won’t have to toy with the pigmentation too much to shift it from a photo of a sort-of pretty, but nothing special, house with navy bricks and white shutters (they used to be teal bricks with purple shutters—no one was ever sure why, but they affectionately nicknamed it “Bruiser,” and the moniker stuck) to something magical. Something emotive. Something that the women from school or Pilates or spin class (none of whom Annie really thinks of as friends because, well, she doesn’t have a lot of real friends) will see and think, OMG! Annie, I wish I was there with you, wherever you are! Xoxoxoxoxoxo!!!!!
She takes the photo four different times, satisfied with the last version, aware that the distraction has calmed her nerves, blocked out the dizzying noise clattering inside her mind. She posts it to Facebook. Filter: vintage.
The letter from David Monroe, Esq., implored them to convene for the full weekend. Annie would not like to convene at all, despite her protests to Baxter. She felt foolish about the way things had ended at the wedding, the way she’d fled like a spurned teenager. But also about the way that it still stung, like a slap that was still fresh, even though she was a full-fledged adult who was on her way to PTA vice president! It’s not like she didn’t recognize how childish her grudges were, not like she didn’t wish she wasn’t the type of person who let those grudges slip away like grains of sand in her palm.
She forgave Baxter for his indiscretions years back because he was her lifeline. But Lindy wasn’t. Lindy isn’t. Even if Bea implored them, all six of them, to be just that. Annie figured if Lindy were her lifeline, she’d never have betrayed her in the first place. So the grudge occupies a small but present place in her heart, dormant but ticking all the same. (She long since forgave Colin because, well, he was Colin. Easy to forgive, easier to hang the moon on. Also, she understood that he was too good for her in the first place.)
So, yes, Annie would have been perfectly A-OK skipping out on the weekend, dipping her toes in the Atlantic with her chiseled husband and doe-eyed son, boiling lobsters and melting butter on grilled corn, and admiring the fireworks from Georgica Beach.
But Catherine had e-mailed that she and Owen were flying in from Chicago, and of course, there was Lindy, who texted from Los Angeles (Annie never replied), but who later texted Catherine to say that she was in, even though the last Annie had heard, they weren’t much on speaking terms either. And rumor had it that the elusive Colin, plastic surgeon to the stars, was jetting in too. Annie fretted over what they’d think of her if she couldn’t even muster up the temerity to hop the train down from New York.
She told Baxter she had to come this weekend because she’d encouraged everyone else to—she was the cheerleader, Baxter! She couldn’t very well not show! She really came because she worried what they would say if she
She adjusts her new haircut and wipes her palms on the leather pants she already regrets. The July heat is damp, unavoidable, sweltering, and the leather appears to have rubberized around her thighs. The stilettos are digging into her pinky toe, blisters ripe and pink on both feet and also developing on her heels.
Breathe. This is what that therapist used to tell her, the one her OB-GYN insisted she see when she broke down on the exam table at her six-month postnatal appointment, her legs still aloft in the stirrups, the rest of her quaking so much the thin paper sheet beneath her shredded in two. Breathe. In. Out. In. Out.
She collects herself and, though her hands are shaking, she holds her phone up to capture the moment. The sun is just starting to fade behind the front façade, which, she thinks to herself, makes the image all the more precious. Maybe she won’t have to toy with the pigmentation too much to shift it from a photo of a sort-of pretty, but nothing special, house with navy bricks and white shutters (they used to be teal bricks with purple shutters—no one was ever sure why, but they affectionately nicknamed it “Bruiser,” and the moniker stuck) to something magical. Something emotive. Something that the women from school or Pilates or spin class (none of whom Annie really thinks of as friends because, well, she doesn’t have a lot of real friends) will see and think, OMG! Annie, I wish I was there with you, wherever you are! Xoxoxoxoxoxo!!!!!
She takes the photo four different times, satisfied with the last version, aware that the distraction has calmed her nerves, blocked out the dizzying noise clattering inside her mind. She posts it to Facebook. Filter: vintage.
The letter from David Monroe, Esq., implored them to convene for the full weekend. Annie would not like to convene at all, despite her protests to Baxter. She felt foolish about the way things had ended at the wedding, the way she’d fled like a spurned teenager. But also about the way that it still stung, like a slap that was still fresh, even though she was a full-fledged adult who was on her way to PTA vice president! It’s not like she didn’t recognize how childish her grudges were, not like she didn’t wish she wasn’t the type of person who let those grudges slip away like grains of sand in her palm.
She forgave Baxter for his indiscretions years back because he was her lifeline. But Lindy wasn’t. Lindy isn’t. Even if Bea implored them, all six of them, to be just that. Annie figured if Lindy were her lifeline, she’d never have betrayed her in the first place. So the grudge occupies a small but present place in her heart, dormant but ticking all the same. (She long since forgave Colin because, well, he was Colin. Easy to forgive, easier to hang the moon on. Also, she understood that he was too good for her in the first place.)
So, yes, Annie would have been perfectly A-OK skipping out on the weekend, dipping her toes in the Atlantic with her chiseled husband and doe-eyed son, boiling lobsters and melting butter on grilled corn, and admiring the fireworks from Georgica Beach.
But Catherine had e-mailed that she and Owen were flying in from Chicago, and of course, there was Lindy, who texted from Los Angeles (Annie never replied), but who later texted Catherine to say that she was in, even though the last Annie had heard, they weren’t much on speaking terms either. And rumor had it that the elusive Colin, plastic surgeon to the stars, was jetting in too. Annie fretted over what they’d think of her if she couldn’t even muster up the temerity to hop the train down from New York.
She told Baxter she had to come this weekend because she’d encouraged everyone else to—she was the cheerleader, Baxter! She couldn’t very well not show! She really came because she worried what they would say if she
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