The House on Honeysuckle Lane Read Free Page B

than struggle with blow dryers and straightening products, she simply tied it back in a ponytail or stuck it up with a big plastic clip. What jewelry she wore had meaning for her—a beaded necklace given to her by an elderly woman she had befriended on her first trip to Mexico, a silver cuff she had bought from a street vendor in India, the tiny gold and moonstone ring she had found half buried in the dirt close by the rim of the Grand Canyon. As for her clothes, Andie liked them to be colorful and, above all, comfortable. There were far more important things to be concerned with than tight waistbands and restricting tops.
    Andie glanced down at her paisley ankle length skirt and pink and purple striped top and couldn’t help but smile. No, her mother, always impeccably and conservatively dressed, would find her daughter’s outfit sloppy and bohemian and she would say as much. But Caro Carlyle Reynolds was no longer here to approve or disapprove of her children, and that, Andie had realized with surprise, was still taking some getting used to. Just before she had left her home in Woodville Junction Andie had spent a fair amount of time meditating on the fact of her mother’s death and wondering about the answer to an important question she had never ventured to ask. Had her mother feared death or had she welcomed it? In her ill and weakened state had she longed for this life to be over and for whatever was to come to come quickly? “Without health life is not life; it is only a state of languor and suffering—an image of death . ” Had Caro Reynolds agreed with the Buddha on this matter?
    â€œWelcome to Oliver’s Well,” Andie read aloud. “Founded 1632.” Not far up the first turn off to the right was the Unitarian Universalist Church, where she had married Bob Dolman when she was just out of college. Andie was looking forward to seeing Bob; she thought they might be the only divorced couple in the country to consider each other dearest friends.
    Still, Andie felt her stomach flutter with the proverbial butterflies. No matter how much time had passed and how much serenity she had achieved, going home to Oliver’s Well always caused a degree of unease. She wondered how Emma felt when she visited. Was she, too, haunted by the ghosts? Daniel was the only Reynolds sibling who had chosen to make a life in Oliver’s Well, and from what Andie could tell, he had chosen wisely for himself. If he was troubled by the past and its habit of lingering in the present, he hadn’t shared that trouble with his oldest sister. We three siblings are so different in some ways, Andie thought. United by DNA, but at times, not much more.
    There, Andie noted, coming up on the left was the rambling old house in which Dr. Burton had lived and practiced family medicine until well into his eighties. Andie remembered as if it were yesterday the big jar of hard candies and lollipops on his desk. And she remembered how she had loved old Dr. Burton as if he were her grandfather. Who knew who occupied the house now? So much change, Andie thought as the house receded into the distance. So much we need to learn how to let go of.
    The last time Andie had been back to Oliver’s Well was for her mother’s funeral. The compelling reason for this visit was her brother’s insistence on the whole family being together for Christmas. The butterflies took flight again in Andie’s stomach, a manifestation of her well-honed instinct for unhappiness, her own or someone else’s. She almost smiled as she wondered what people would think if they knew that Andie Reynolds—she had reverted to her birth name after her divorce—self-help author /speaker/respected guru and lifestyle coach (call her what you will), was momentarily overcome with good old-fashioned fear.
    â€œJust as a snake sheds its skin, we must shed our past over and over again.” Andie firmly believed this process of