A Letter for Annie Read Free Page A

But more about that later.” She paused to cough wetly into a tissue. “I thought each day we might make some headway with what’s in the chest. You can work in the afternoon while I rest.”
    “I’d like that,” Annie said quietly.
    “You know, this house is falling apart. The porch railings are loose and there are water spots upstairs. I don’t want to even think about dry rot around the doors and windows. Would you mind going through the place to check for problem areas?”
    “Not at all.”
    “I’ll phone my neighbor Frances Gardner for recommendations for a repairman—it’s been so long since I lived here. I want to get this done.”
    Annie recognized the steel in Geneva’s voice and the implied message: before I die. “I’ll get right on it.”
    “Good. Then after my nap, I’m challenging you to a game of gin rummy. Winner gets an extra glass of wine.” Her eyes glinted mischievously.
    “Are you even supposed to drink?”
    “One glass. But that’s if I lose. Which I won’t.”
    Annie wanted to argue, to implore her aunt to do exactly what the doctor had ordered. Yet, if her days were numbered, what harm could a second glass of wine do in the big scheme of things?
    The phone rang and Annie heard Carmen answer it in the kitchen. After a few moments, she appeared in the doorway, her expressive eyes filled with tears.
    Geneva stretched out her hand. “Carmen, what is it, dear?”
    “My daughter. She’s had her baby. A niño, a boy. Too soon. Three months soon. I…She needs help with my granddaughter.”
    “Of course, you must go.” Geneva’s tone brooked no argument. “As soon as you can.”
    “But you are sick and—”
    “Annie is here and she will take care of me.”
    Carmen wiped her eyes. “ Gracias, señorita. I go now and pack. Annie, you come and I tell you about caring for your tia. ”
    The rest of the day passed in a blur of instructions and arrangements. At Geneva’s insistence that she could be left alone, Annie drove Carmen to catch a shuttle at the nearby beach resort.
    When Annie returned to the cottage in the late afternoon, she noticed there were no lights shining from the house. She found Geneva asleep in her chair, her skin ashen and her breath labored, despite the oxygen tank.
    Annie panicked. What did she know about caring for a dying woman? With Carmen away, Annie would be forced into the community—to the grocery, the pharmacy, the gas station. There would be no avoiding people. People who would not welcome her presence. People who would blame her.
     

    M ONDAY MORNING Kyle dragged himself into consciousness, battling images of his recurring nightmare. Drenched in sweat, he sat on the side of the bed cradling his aching head in his hands. Damn it, damn it, damn it! The dream always started so innocently, luring him into the vortex of horror. The details might change, but the ending never did. Dressed in period costume, he stood on a scaffolding, holding in his hand a long-handled ax, dripping with blood. And staring up at him with a gentle but distorted smile was Pete, his head severed from his neck.
    It didn’t take a shrink to get the symbolism. The hell of it was, he lived it every day, with or without the dream. Each time he passed the field where he and Pete had played American Legion baseball, reported to the National Guard Armory or shook hands with Bruce.
    Why couldn’t it have been him? What did he have to live for compared to Pete? A mother who’d abandoned him and a father who beat the crap out of him on a regular basis? Certainly not a beautiful girl he loved with every fiber of his being. Nor a future full of promise.
    Kyle shut his eyes to the photo on his dresser of him and Pete, arms around each other’s shoulders, caps tilted cockily, on their last day of leave before deployment to Afghanistan.
    Slowly the sensation of Bubba licking his toes pulled him from his thoughts.
    After a long, hot shower and a bowl of instant oatmeal, he felt minimally