The Summer Kitchen by Lisa Wingate Read Free Book Online

were empty, they seemed full of the things that used to be there—Aunt Ruth’s old upright piano, the umbrella stand with the lion head carved on top, the game table where we played Parcheesi, Scrabble, and Hand ’n Foot, the recliners where Aunt Ruth and Poppy sat watching the old console TV that was always turned up so loud your head rang with sound long after you left the house.
    Every corner was filled with benevolent ghosts. On the walls, the shadows of pictures and furniture remained, baked in by the passage of years. Those could use a coat of paint, too, I mused, then laid out some newspaper and opened the partial gallon. Inside, yellow liquid and white pigment melted together in a strange swirl, the surface iridescent. I pushed in a stick and stirred it. Poppy would like that I was making use of leftovers. Having lived through the Depression era, he believed in waste not, want not. The garden shed outside was a testament to his thriftiness—so filled with old tools, pieces of lawnmowers, bicycle parts, wheels, axles, chains, gardening supplies, and other bits of memorabilia that we had given up trying to clean it out for the estate sale, and just locked the door.
    My reconstituted paint looked usable after a few minutes of stirring, but the paintbrush I’d brought from home was impossibly stiff. One of the boys had probably employed it for a science fair project and then failed to properly wash it out. Clumps of bristles sealed together left a streaky white mess across the newspaper when I tested it.
    I considered going out to the garden shed for another, but then decided it would be easier to run to the store. And probably safer. No telling what was living in Poppy’s shed by now.
    I locked up the house and the burglar bars, then drove past Blue Sky Hill to the corner where a Supercenter had been erected to serve the needs of the area’s new residents. It was only a few blocks away, but the glimmering commercial corner with its clothing shops, up-scale restaurants, and parking lots full of new cars seemed miles from Poppy’s street.
    In the hardware department, I deliberated the issue of paintbrushes until finally a young clerk offered advice.
    “What kind of existing surface are you trying to cover?” he asked, and I admitted that I had no idea whether the paint on the cabinets was oil or latex.
    He laughed, and something in the sound reminded me of Jake. I felt a twinge, like an imbedded splinter that rubs at the most unexpected moments. The clerk had the look of a college boy. He might be a student at SMU, like Jake.
    “I’ll take one of each,” I said, and held out my basket for the three brushes we had under consideration. “Thanks for the help.”
    “Anytime,” he answered. “Have a nice day.”
    In the self-checkout line, I paid with cash like a cheating spouse, afraid her clandestine life might be discovered by a careless charge on the credit card. I justified it in my own mind as I threaded through the crowds to the door, then stepped into the sunlight.
    “Excuse me,” someone said as I fished through my purse for my sunglasses before finding them on top of my head.
    “Excuse me,” the woman’s voice repeated, more loudly this time. “Could someone give me a ride to my apartment?”
    I didn’t know who she was talking to, but it wasn’t any of my business. Shifting my sack, I pulled out the car keys. A van stopped to drop off passengers, and a young man pushed a long line of shopping carts past the door, temporarily hemming in the crowd.
    “Excuse me,” the voice beckoned again. I glanced over my shoulder and saw a woman on the bench. Her legs were strangely bent, and two walking canes rested beside her. “Could anyone give me a ride to my apartment? It’s close by.”
    I looked around. There were men in business suits, a teenager with colored hair and a tattoo, a grandmother with a baby in her arms, a young woman in a pretty floral dress, an old man in leisure clothes, a mother