A Letter for Annie by Laura Abbot Read Free Book Online Page A

painful morning hours that followed, she’d had no choice. Giving up the dreams she and Pete had shared had taken every ounce of her strength and had left her hollow.
    Auntie G. was right. She needed to face her demons. Yet the immediacy of her revulsion when she’d seen the Kittiwake house had scared her. She didn’t want to revisit the past, even as a means of healing. In Bisbee she had avoided the issue; here, it confronted her everywhere.
    When she reached the cottage, Geneva was dozing in her chair, her veined hands resting on a stack of photographs in her lap. In repose, the crepelike skin on her face sagged and she looked every one of her eighty years. Her chest worked to pull in air, and with each exhalation, a ragged sigh escaped her lips. Annie smoothed back the wisps of hair on her forehead, and then went into the kitchen to make a fruit salad and warm some soup for supper.
    “Annie?”
    “I’m in the kitchen.” She lowered the heat on the stove and went into the living room.
    “I must’ve dropped off. Did you have a nice walk?”
    Erasing the image of Margaret’s stony face, Annie nodded.
    “Could we eat in here on trays?”
    “No problem.”
    “After supper I want to give you more of the family history and it’s just easier to stay here to eat.”
    The truth, but not the whole truth, Annie suspected. Each day, in increasingly obvious ways, her great-aunt was failing.
    Famished from skipping lunch and walking on the beach, Annie wolfed down her supper. Geneva, on the other hand, moved fruit around on her plate before finally spearing a chunk of pineapple and eating it. She did better with the soup, but still left half a bowl untouched. “I’m finished,” she said, dabbing her lips with her napkin.
    “Auntie G., you need to keep your strength up.”
    “I’m trying. But who are we fooling? I’m not going to live forever.”
    Annie seized the opening. “What have your doctors said?”
    Geneva gazed directly into Annie’s eyes. “That I’m terminal. Complications from my weak lungs and congestive heart failure will ultimately make breathing nearly impossible and affect other systems.” She handed her tray to Annie. “That’s why we have to make the most of the time I have. Starting with tonight.”
    In the kitchen, blinking back tears, Annie rinsed the dishes and quickly loaded them in the dishwasher. Nina had tried to warn her and she’d understood the seriousness of Geneva’s situation, but hearing the word terminal from her great-aunt made the prospect unavoidably real.
    “Do you remember your grandfather at all?” Geneva asked when they were settled in the living room.
    “I saw him only a few times. When Daddy died, he came to the funeral. He brought me a doll. But I never played with it. It reminded me too much of the day of the funeral and the way the house smelled sickeningly of flowers and macaroni and cheese.” Annie recalled looking up at her tall, slender grandfather with his gray hair and sad blue eyes. The man who had come not just to comfort her with a doll, but to bury his son.
    Geneva stared into space before continuing. “When Caleb was born, I thought he’d been created solely for my entertainment. I was four and, from the beginning, mothered him. Summers here at the ocean were magical. I loved holding his little hand and leading him down to the beach for family picnics. As he grew older, he was a natural athlete who shared my zest for adventure. One day just before World War II we hiked so far down the beach we didn’t get home until nearly dark. Our mother was frantic.” She smiled at the memory, then was quiet for a moment, the hiss of the oxygen a reminder of howfar removed she was from that time when she and her brother had romped at the shore.
    She shuffled through the photographs, handing Annie one of a skinny young man in a swimsuit balancing on a rock, waves crashing around him, a delighted grin on his face. “He was such fun. He had a talent for