After losing her job and her girlfriend, it's time for Annie Abraham to admit defeat and move back in with her parents. She has hardly been back to her tiny Montana hometown since the unforgettable summer before her senior year of college, when she...
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Weekdays belong to my job. Weekends belong to my kids. There isn't much time left for me, but I do get a sliver on Saturday evenings, when Hannah goes to bed early to read and Otto goes to his Xbox in the playroom the second dinner's done, and my youngest, Ava, is down for the night. From seven thirty, I am alone. Three hours of solitude if I'm lucky, although I often can't keep my eyes open past nine thirty.
I can watch whatever I want on TV, have a glass of wine if I'm feeling fancy, maybe have a long soak in the tub with a good book. I'm leaning towards a reading session, sitting on the sofa with a handful of new proofs laid out on the coffee table, when the doorbell goes.
"The hell?" I mutter to myself. It's nearly eight o'clock. Way too late for someone to drop in, and if it was my mom or my ex, they'd usually call or text first. I get up with a groan, letting in a frozen draft when I open the door and see Ruth on the other side.
"Kind of a late visit," I say, opening the door wider to let her in, ushering her out of the cold. "What's up?" I lead her to the kitchen, always the first port of call when welcoming guests into my home. It's a bit of a mess at the moment, but that's a problem for tomorrow morning. Sundays are chore days, and although my kids complain, they do get them done.
"I've been deciding whether or not to come tell you about what happened at the store today."
I sigh and look at her over my shoulder as I take a couple of mugs out of the cupboard. Ruth comes over every now and then and she never refuses a cup of tea. "I don't work weekends, Ruth," I say, giving her a warning glare and put the stovetop kettle on to boil. "I don't want to hear what happened at the store today. Especially not at eight o'clock on a Saturday. Can't you hear the beautiful silence of all three of my children being quietly occupied?"
"Well, that's what I thought you'd say, which is why I decided not to come. But then I thought, seeing as it's not actually work related but it is related to yesterday's interrogation, you'd want to know. So here I am."
"Interrogation?"
"You were quizzing me about some girl who looks like Barbie."
"In your words. I never called her that," I say.
"Then if I may say so myself, I wasn't far wrong. She came into the store today."
I whip around so fast that a couple of tea bags fly out of the box in my hand. No wine tonight. Just a cup of Sleepytime tea. "She did?"
Ruth gives me a smug smile. "See, you do want to know."
"How'd you know it was her?" I ask, trying to swallow down the steadily increasing rate of my heart. So it was Annie in the coffee shop. She really is back.
"Tall, smiley, blonde girl in a pink dress," Ruth says.
"That could be anyone, really." Please be her. I don't know where the thought comes from, why I want it to be Annie. Why, when she made me fall in love with her and then she abandoned me? I shouldn't want to ever see her face again, but instead my mind is filled with the memory of her warm hands on my waist, her soft lips on my neck, the color of her lipstick and the scent of her perfume and the taste of her tongue.
