Jess is taking a break from work and goes for a stroll through her old neighborhood.
********************************************
Jess sucked on a piece of onion
grass as she headed for Huddle Road. She’d lived there for the first fifteen
years of her life. Then her mom shot her dad and went to jail. She and her
little brother were shipped off to foster care until she was eighteen, when she got
a job and custody of Will.
They had to leave the charming
little farmhouse with a Dutch door in the back and a small barn. As she rounded
the bend, the old general store came into view. It had closed not long after
she left. The Mountain View section of Pine Grove, despite it’s elegant name, was
run down, decrepit. Her old house, now bank property, had a few broken windows
and a hole in the front steps. The porch sagged. The house seemed sad.
Jess smiled as she sat,
cross-legged, in front of it and remembered some happy times there. Even the
old general store brought good memories. Mr. Franklin, who owned it, would give
her a licorice stick free from time to time. She’d been his favorite because
she had good manners.
He died in the store of a heart
attack. No one wanted the place and now it was dying, too, just like the man
who had built and run it for fifty years.
“Why does everything have to
change? Why can’t good things stay the same?” she asked a butterfly fluttering
in her face.
She and Will lived in a small apartment
in a rundown house. Jess baked pies and cakes for the local restaurants and
Will did carpentry. Together they eked out a living. The aroma of baked goods distracted
her from her shabby living quarters and early wake-up time. As grandma always
said, “there’s good everywhere, if you look for it.”
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So glad for another peek at this. Great scene.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great snippet and I LOVE the name of the coffee shop!
ReplyDeleteThis looks like it's going to be a great story, too. Of course, everything you write is excellent! Looking forward to what's going to happen next.
ReplyDelete